California Law Review
Volume 74 | Issue 3
Article 2
May 1986
The Social Foundations of Defamation Law:
Reputation and the Constitution
Robert C. Post
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Recommended Citation
Robert C. Post, The Social Foundations of Defamation Law: Reputation and the Constitution, 74 Cal. L. Rev. 691 (1986).
Available at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/californialawreview/vol74/iss3/2
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The Social Foundations of Defamation
Law: Reputation and the
Constitution
Robert C. Postt
The common law of defamation has long been viewed as an intellectual wasteland, "perplexed with minute and barren distinctions."' Dean
Prosser, for example, began his discussion of the law of defamation with
the proposition, which he took to be incontestable, that "there is a great
deal of the law of defamation which makes no sense," in that it contains
"anomalies and absurdities for which no legal writer ever has had a kind
word." 2 It was with considerable relief, therefore, that in 1964 legal
commentators turned their attention to the difficult and fascinating constitutional questions raised by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,3 which
for the first time subjected the law of defamation to the regulation of the
first amendment. Discussion of the law of defamation has been dominated ever since by the constitutional perspective.'
From this elevated perspective the purpose of defamation law looks,
paradoxically, simple enough. The common law of slander and libel is
designed to effectuate society's "pervasive and strong interest in preventing and redressing attacks upon reputation." 5 The trick is then to "balance the State's interest in compensating private individuals for injury to
their reputation against the First Amendment interest in protecting this
t
Acting Professor of Law, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.
This article would not have been possible without the advice and encouragement of Jerome
Skolnick. Many of the ideas it contains emerged from a seminar that we taught together on the
sociology of libel, and during the dark hours of composition Jerry was a constant source of
assistance, insight, and wise counsel. No one could have been a kinder, more selfless, or more
supportive colleague. I am also grateful for the comments and assistance of Paul Mishkin, Jan
Vetter, Franklin Zimring, Melvin Eisenberg, Sheldon Messinger, Sanford Levinson, David
Lieberman, and Jeremy Waldron. Thanks are also due to Mark Ryland, Marty Slaughter, and Jerry
Friedberg for their help and research, and to the Center for the Study of Law and Society for its
financial support.
1. F. POLLOCK, THE LAW OF TORTS 243 (13th ed. 1929).
2. W. PROSSER, HANDBOOK OF THE LAW OF TORTS 737 (4th ed. 1971).
3. 376 U.S. 254 (1964).
4. See, e.g., R. SACK, LIBEL, SLANDER AND RELATED PROBLEMS 1 (1980). This tendency
perhaps reached its zenith in a recent article which began: "American libel law came into being only
22 years ago, with the Supreme Court's 1964 decision in the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case."
Sanford, Some Lessons in Libel: A Primeron the DangerZones, WASH. J. REV., March 1986, at 28.
5. Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 86 (1966).
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW
[Vol. 74:691
6
type of expression."
The image of balancing, however, implies that the characteristics of
each of the competing interests have been assessed and evaluated.
Although there has been considerable scholarly attention directed to the
definition and articulation of "the First Amendment interest" in protecting expression, there has been relatively little discussion of the nature and
importance of "the State's interest" in protecting reputation. The latter
inquiry, of course, requires an exploration into the obscure purposes and
functions of common law defamation, which is not a journey that many
modem commentators have been willing to undertake, especially given
the attractive and well-travelled alternative routes of constitutional analysis. It is all too easy to assume that everyone knows the value of reputation, and to let the matter drop with the obligatory reference to
Shakespeare's characterization of a "good name" as the "immediate
jewel" of the soul.7
Reputation, however, is a mysterious thing. The common law, as a
rule, has "not attempted to define reputation."' The dictionary describes
it as the "common or general estimate of a person with respect to character or other qualities." 9 Reputation thus inheres in the social apprehension that we have of each other. In one sense, of course, virtually all of
our social relationships consist of such apprehension, and it is not clear
what it would mean for them all to be "protected" by defamation law.
But by looking carefully at the nature of the "injuries affecting a man's
reputation or good name"'" defamation law is actually designed to
redress, one can uncover a more focused image of the exact kinds of
6. Dunn & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 105 S.Ct, 2939, 2944-45 (1985)
(opinion of Powell, J.).
7. W. SHAKESPEARE, OTHELLO, act III, scene iii, 11155-61:
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing,
'Twas mine 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
See, e.g., Pierce v. Capital Cities Communications, Inc., 576 F.2d 495, 505 n.33 (3d Cir. 1978);
Maheu v. Hughes Tool Co., 569 F.2d 459, 480 n.14 (9th Cir. 1977); Embrey v. Holly, 293 Md. 128,
130 n.2, 442 A.2d 966, 967 n.2 (1982); Jadwin v. Minneapolis Star and Tribune Co., 367 N.W.2d
476, 491 n.20 (Minn. 1985); Onassis v. Christian Dior - New York, Inc., 122 Misc.2d 603, 610, 472
N.Y.S.2d 254, 260 (1984); Adamson v. Bonesteele, 295 Or. 815, 821 n.4, 671 P.2d 693, 696 n.4
(1983); Kemick v. Dardanell Press, 428 Pa. 288, 292, 236 A.2d 191, 193 (1967); Crump v. Beckley
Newspapers, Inc., 320 S.E.2d 70, 76 n.2 (W. Va. 1984); Denny v. Mertz, 106 Wis.2d 636, 658 n.33,
318 N.W.2d 141, 152 n.33 (1982); P.F. CARTER-RUCK, LIBEL & SLANDER 19 (1972); Note, The
Interest in Limiting the Disclosureof PersonalInformation: A ConstitutionalAnalysis, 36 VAND. L.
REv. 139, 160-61 (1983); cf Z. CHATEE, GOVERNMENT AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS 96 (1965).
8. Developments in the Law-Defamation, 69 HARV. L. REV. 875, 877 (1956).
9.
10.
8 OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 496 (James Murray ed. 1910).
3 W. BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND *123.
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
social apprehension that defamation law considers "normal," or "desirable," or deserving of the law's protection. In this sense defamation law
presupposes an image of how people are tied together, or should be tied
together, in a social setting. As this image varies, so will the nature of
the reputation that the law of defamation seeks to protect.
This suggests that an evaluation of the state's interest in reputation
can have no single outcome, for the meaning and significance of reputation will depend upon the kinds of social relationships that defamation
law is designed to uphold. In this Article I will sketch three distinct
concepts of reputation that the common law of defamation has at various
times in its history attempted to protect: reputation as property, as
honor, and as dignity. These three concepts are not the only possible
concepts of reputation, but they have had by far the most important
impact on the development of the common law of defamation. Each corresponds to an implicit and discrete image of the good and well-ordered
society. Each is an ideal or pure type in the Weberian sense;1 ' that is,
they are as types analytically distinct, although in actuality there may be,
and indeed must be, some overlap. 2 Each has exercised a significant
influence on common law doctrine, pushing that doctrine in diverse and
divergent directions. And each weighs very differently in the balance
against our constitutional interest in freedom of expression.
I
THREE CONCEPTS OF REPUTATION
A.
Reputation as Property
The concept of reputation that is most easily available to contemporary observers is that of reputation in the marketplace. This concept of
reputation can be understood as a form of intangible property akin to
goodwill.'" It is this concept of reputation that underlies our image of
the merchant who works hard to become known as creditworthy or of
the carpenter who strives to achieve a name for quality workmanship.
Such a reputation is capable of being earned, in the sense that it can be
acquired as a result of an individual's efforts and labor. Thomas Starkie
11. 1 M. WEBER, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 217 (G. Roth & C. Wittich eds. 1968).
12. The historical relationship among these three concepts raises complex questions that will
require further investigation. This Article will attempt simply to identify and analyze the concepts,
and to demonstrate their influence on common law defamation.
13. For a discussion of the concept of "goodwill" as a property right "enforceable in law and in
equity," see I A. DEWING, THE FINANCIAL POLICY OF CORPORATIONS 285 n.j (1953). For a
discussion of the history of the concept of "goodwill," see G.R. CATLETT & N.O. OLSON,
ACCOUNTING FOR GOODWILL 9-21 (1968). An economic analysis of the concept of "reputation"
may be found in Holmstrom, The Provision of Services in a Market Economy, in MANAGING THE
SERVICE ECONOMY 197-207 (R. Inman ed. 1985).
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW
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well described this concept of reputation over a hundred and fifty years
ago:
Reputation itself, considered as the object of injury, owes its being and
importance chiefly to the various artificial relations which are created as
society advances.
The numerous gradations of rank and authority, the honours and
distinctions extended to the exertion of talent in the learned professions,
the emoluments acquired by mechanical skill and ingenuity, under the
numerous subdivisions of labour, the increase of commerce, and particularly the substitution of symbols for property in commercial intercourse-all, in different degrees, connect themselves with credit and
character, affixing to them a value, not merely ideal, but capable of pecuniary admeasurement, and consequently
recommending them as the
14
proper objects of legal protection.
For Starkie the reputation protected by defamation law is something
that a person can earn through "the exertion of talent" or the exercise of
"mechanical skill and ingenuity." To injure such a reputation without
justification is to unjustly destroy the results of an individual's labor.
The resulting loss is "capable of pecuniary admeasurement" because the
value of reputation is determined by the marketplace in exactly the same
manner that the marketplace determines the cash value of any property
loss.15
The concept of reputation as property explains why defamation law
proscribes aspersions on an individual's character even in contexts that
are not narrowly oriented toward business relationships. This is because
character can be viewed-and at the time Starkie was writing was in fact
viewed-as "the fruit of personalexertion."' 6 On this account character
"is not inherited from parents; it is not created by external advantages; it
is no necessary appendage of birth, or wealth, or talents, or station; but
the result of one's own endeavors,-the fruit and reward of good principles, manifested in a course of virtuous and honorable action." 7 Such
character is understood to be a form of "capital" since it "creates funds"
and the potential for "patronage and support."'" The reputation for
good character, as distinct from the possession of the character itself, can
14. T. STARKIE, A TREATISE ON THE LAW OF SLANDER, LIBEL, SCANDALUM MAGNATUM
AND FALSE RUMOURS xx (New York 1826).
15. Thomas Hobbes had by the seventeenth century already equated reputation with monetary
value. To Hobbes the "Value, or WORTH of a man, is, as of all other things, his Price.. ....
and the
"manifestation of the Value we set on one another, is that which is commonly called Honouring, and
Dishonouring. To Value a man at a high rate, is to Honour him; at a low rate, is to Dishonour him."
T. HOBBES, LEVIATHAN 42 (1651).
16.
J. HAWES, LECTURES ADDRESSED TO THE YOUNG MEN OF HARTFORD AND NEW
HAVEN 95 (Hartford 1828).
17. Id. at 95-96.
18. Id. at 112.
19861
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
also be understood as the result of individual exertion. From this perspective defamation law safeguards "that repute which is slowly built up
by integrity, honorable conduct, and right living. One's good name is...
as truly the product of one's efforts as any physical possession." 19 The
potential financial importance of a reputation for good character was
stressed by Max Weber, who in his travels in the United States observed
that qualifying for "admission" to certain voluntary religious sects was
"recognized as an absolute guarantee of the moral qualities of a gentleman," a guarantee that immediately translated into "credit worthiness." 20 Benjamin Franklin even went so far as to define "characterin
terms of the amount of 'credit' a community would extend to a person,
based on an estimate of his 'good repute,' his 'affluence,' and his 'felicity.' "21 Unjustified aspersions on character can thus deprive individuals
of the results of their labors of self-creation, and the ensuing injury can
be monetarily assessed.
The concept of reputation as property presupposes that individuals
are connected to each other through the institution of the market. The
market provides the mechanism by which the value of property is determined. The purpose of the law of defamation is to protect individuals
within the market by ensuring that their reputation is not wrongfully
deprived of its proper market value. Defamation law should therefore
not be concerned with purely private injuries which are independent of
the market. Although individuals may attach importance to the way
others regard them, a decline in this regard resulting merely in hurt feelings should not be the subject of redress. Thus Starkie notes that defamation law exists to compensate "temporal" losses, not "spiritual
grievances, which cannot be estimated in money... [A]nd so, a mere
injury to the feelings without actual deterioration of person or property,
'22
cannot form an independent and substantive ground of proceeding.
Underlying the concept of reputation as property is an implicit
image of a form of society that I shall call a "market society." Three
distinctive features of this image should be emphasized. First, because
the concept views a person as capable of creating his reputation, 23 it presupposes that no matter what society's present estimation of an individ19. Veeder, The History and Theory of the Law of Defamation, 4 COLUM. L. REv. 33 (1904).
20. Weber, The ProtestantSects and the Spirit of Capitalism, in FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS
IN SOCIOLOGY 302, 308 (H.H. Gerth & C. W. Mills eds. 1958).
21. B. BLEDSTEIN, THE CULTURE OF PROFESSIONALISM 134 (1976).
22. T. STARKIE, supra note 14, at 9.
23. Of course reputation as property, like any other form of property, can, in certain
circumstances, be exchanged between persons; it can sometimes be sold and perhaps even inherited.
An example would be a corporation that purchases the good will of another. The essential point,
however, is that reputation as property can also be the product of individual effort, indeed may
ultimately be founded upon individual effort, and that the worth of such reputation is determined by
reference to the marketplace.
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW
[Vol. 74:691
ual, he in theory always retains the capacity to work toward the
production of a new reputation. In this sense individuals in a market
society are understood to possess personal identities that are distinct
from and anterior to their social identities. 24 Individuals are not constituted by the social regard with which they are apprehended by others.
Second, because the concept of reputation as property requires defamation law to protect only those aspects of an individual's reputation
that the market can measure, the concept assumes that the worth of a
person's reputation will vary with market conditions. Reputation is thus
not an absolute, a matter of either honor or dishonor. It is instead envisioned as a smooth and continuous curve of potential value. The legally
protected interest in reputation will rise or fall depending upon an individual's productivity and upon fluctuations in market conditions.
Third, the concept of reputation as property presupposes that all
persons are equal, in the sense of "the equal subordination of every individual to the laws of the market."2 5 No person has the right to a reputation other than that created by the evaluative processes of the market,
and, conversely, every person enjoys an equal right to enter the market to
attempt to achieve what reputation he can.
The concept of reputation as property, together with the image of
the market society that it carries within it, can create a powerful and
internally coherent account of defamation law. It can explain why the
law protects reputation, and what kinds of social evaluation deserve the
law's protection. There are aspects of modern defamation law that can
be understood only by reference to the concept of reputation as property,
as, for example, the fact that corporations and other inanimate entities
can sue for defamation. 26 The concept of reputation as property is so
deeply imbedded in our understanding of defamation law that a prominent nineteenth century writer could conclude that in defamation law
"the protection is to the property, and not to the reputation ...
[P]ecuniary loss to the plaintiff is the gist of the action for slander or
libel."21 7 And in the twentieth century no less a commentator than David
Riesman could observe that where, as in the United States, "tradition is
24.
25.
See A. KRONMAN, MAX WEBER 104 (1983).
C.B. MACPHERSON, THE POLITICAL THEORY OF POSSESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM: HOBBES
TO LOCKE 85 (1962). Many of the characteristics described in the text are similar to those used by
MacPherson to describe a "possessive market society." See id. at 53-61.
26. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS §§ 561-562 (1977); W. PROSSER, D. DOBBS, R.
KEETON & D. OWEN, PROSSER & KEETON ON TORTS 779-80 (5th ed. 1984) [hereinafter PROSSER
& KEETON].
27. J. TOWNSHEND, A TREATISE ON THE WRONGS CALLED SLANDER AND LIBEL 108-09
(1877). Almost 100 years earlier James Wilson had noted that "the honour of character is a
property, which is, indeed, precious .... [lit is a property, which must be purchased." 2 THE
WORKS OF JAMES WILSON 595 (R. McClosky ed. 1967). See Dixon v. Holden, 7 L.R.-Eq. 488, 492
(1869) (A man's reputation "is his property, and, if possible, more valuable than other property.")
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
capitalistic rather than feudalistic, reputation is only an asset, 'good will',
not an attribute to be sought after for its intrinsic value."2
It is clear, however, that the concept of reputation as property is
deeply inconsistent with important doctrines of common law defamation.
It cannot explain so fundamental a doctrine as that a communication
must be deemed defamatory before it can support an action. 29 The common law of defamation will not offer redress for untrue communications
that are not defamatory, even if they cause damage to an individual's
credit or business opportunities. An example is a communication to the
effect that an individual is dead.3 ° The very elementary requirement that
liability attach only to defamatory communications can be explained
only by reference to a concept of reputation other than that of reputation
as property.
The concept of reputation as property also cannot explain the
important fact that at common law "harm to reputation was presumed
from the publication" of a communication that was a slander per se or
libel, and that in a civil suit "the trier of facts could return a substantial
verdict for the plaintiff without any proof of actual harm to reputation.",3 1 The presumption of damages thus puts defamation law in the
business of compensating individuals for harms which, from the perspective of reputation as property, may well be nonexistent.
The usual explanation of this "oddity of tort law,",32 which has been
called "the most important single rule in defamation,
'33 is
"that damage
to reputation is recurringly difficult to prove and that requiring actual
proof would repeatedly destroy any chance for adequate compensa(per Malins, V.C.). G.S. BOWER, A CODE OF THE LAW OF ACTIONABLE DEFAMATION 275 (1908)
("For purposes of the civil law of defamation, reputation is regarded as a species of property.").
28. Riesman, Democracy and Defamation: Control of Group Libel, 42 COLUM. L. REv. 727,
730 (1942). For this reason Riesman concluded that in the United States "[t]he law of libel is
consequently unimportant." Id.
29.
RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS §§ 558-559 (1977).
30. Cohen v. New York Times Co., 153 A.D. 242, 138 N.Y.S. 206 (1912).
31. L. ELDREDGE, THE LAW OF DEFAMATION § 95, at 537 (1978). See Melton v. Bow, 241
Ga. 629, 630, 247 S.E.2d 100, 101 (1978), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 985 (1978).
From the fact of the publication of the defamatory matter by the defendant, damage to the
plaintiff is said to be 'presumed,' and the jury, without any further data, is at liberty to
assess substantial damages, upon the assumption that the plaintiff's reputation has been
injured and his feelings wounded.
McCormick, The Measure of Damagesfor Defamation, 12 N.C.L. REv. 120, 127 (1933).
Townshend viewed the presumption of damages as a "fiction... of pecuniary loss." J. TOWNSHEND, supra note 27, at 110. The common law of defamation did not presume damages if the
publication at issue constituted a slander that did not fall within one of the per se categories. See text
accompanying notes 40-41 infra.
32. Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 349 (1974).
33. Kalven, The Law ofDefamation and the FirstAmendment, in CONFERENCE ON THE ARTS,
PUBLISHING AND THE LAW 12 (1952)
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW
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tion." 4 But there are three reasons why this explanation is unconvincing, at least under the concept of reputation as property. First, the
presumption of injury in defamation law is irrebuttable. "[T]he fact that
defendant can show that no damage whatsoever has occurred will not
defeat the action." 3 5 Since damages are "conclusively" presumed,3 6 a
plaintiff can recover large damages even if he specifically withdraws from
the court any claim that his reputation has in fact been damaged,3 7 and
even if it is established that no one believed the defamatory communication. 8 The fact that the presumption of general damages is irrebuttable is
inexplicable from the standpoint of the concept of reputation as property,
and it strongly suggests that the presumption is performing a function
quite different than that of merely filling an evidentiary vacuum.
Second, the law of defamation presumes damages only in certain
kinds of cases. The common law distinguishes between libel and slander, 39 and between slander and slander per se.40 Damages are presumed
only if the communication at issue constitutes slander per se or libel.,
While cases that require proof of damages are now relatively rare, they
were once viewed as constituting an important part of defamation law.
Indeed Starkie observed that "[i]n general ... it is necessary to prove a
specific loss to have been sustained, by the evidence of which a jury is to
be guided in assessing pecuniary damages." 4 2 Yet there is no reason to
believe that in such cases the difficulty in proving actual damage to reputation is in any degree diminished.
34. Gertz, 418 U.S. at 394 (White, J., dissenting); see Dun & Bradstreet Inc., v. Greenmoss
Builders, Inc., 105 S.Ct. 2939, 2946 (1985) (opinion of Powell, J.).
35. 1 A. HANSON, LIBEL AND RELATED TORTS § 161 (1969). See GATLEY ON LIBEL AND
SLANDER
4 (8th ed. 1981); RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 559 comment d (1977).
36. Clark v. McClurg, 215 Cal. 279, 284, 9 P.2d 505, 507 (1932); Johnson v. Finance
Acceptance Co., 118 Fla. 397, 400-01, 159 S. 364, 365 (1935); Lorillard v. Field Enterprises, Inc., 65
Ill. App. 2d 65, 78, 213 N.E.2d 1, 7 (1965); Baker v. Clark, 186 Ky. 816, 820, 218 S.W. 280, 282
(1920); Matherson v. Marchello, 100 A.D.2d 233, 237, 473 N.Y.S.2d 998, 1002 (1984); Stewart v.
Nation-Wide Check Corp., 279 N.C. 278, 284, 182 S.E.2d 410, 414 (1971); Memphis Pub. Co. v.
Nichols, 569 S.W.2d. 412, 419 (Tenn. 1978).
37. Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 448, 460 (1976).
38. Farnum v. Colbert, 293 A.2d 279, 282 (D.C. 1972); Modisette & Adams v. Lorenze, 163
La. 505, 511, 112 So. 397, 399 (1927); Bonkowski v. Arlan's Department Store, 383 Mich. 90, 97-98,
174 N.W.2d 765, 767 (1970); Herrmann v. Newark Morning Ledger Co., 48 N.J. Super. 420, 441,
138 A.2d 61, 72 (1958).
39. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 568 (1977). A rough characterization of this
distinction is that it corresponds to the difference between written and oral communication. But see
id. § 568A.
40. Id. §§ 569-574. Although the common law has at various times recognized different
categories of slander per se, it is now ordinarily understood to encompass four kinds of oral
communication: those that impute a criminal offense to another; those that impute a loathsome
disease; those that impute matters incompatible with another's business, trade, profession, or office;
and those that impute serious sexual misconduct. Id. § 570.
41. Id. §§ 558(d), 575.
42. T. STARKIE, supra note 14, at 9.
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
Third, in the closely related tort of injurious falsehood, which historically has been known by such names as "disparagement of property,"
"slander of goods," or "trade libel," and which is unequivocally
addressed to the protection of property interests like chattels, trademarks, copyrights, and patents, the law does not presume damage from
the fact of publication.4 3 A plaintiff must instead earn his damages by
tendering the usual proof of pecuniary loss.' In many cases, particularly
where the plaintiff is a corporation, it is difficult to distinguish between
defamation and injurious falsehood, since it is not possible to separate
defamation of the plaintiff from disparagement of plaintiff's property or
business.4 5 Yet damages will only be presumed if the action is styled as
one for defamation. In such cases the evidentiary explanation of the presumption of damages is revealed as the fiction that it is.
Important and fundamental aspects of defamation law are thus inexplicable from the perspective of reputation as property. To understand
them, we must turn to the analysis of other concepts of reputation.
B.
Reputation as Honor
There is an ancient tradition which views the worth of reputation as
incommensurate with the values of the marketplace. The Bible, for example, tells us that "[a] good name is rather to be chosen than great
riches." 46 And Shakespeare observes that a "purse" is merely "trash"
when compared to the value of a "good name."'47 The concepts of reputation underlying this tradition are clearly incompatible with the notion
of reputation as a form of property.
One strand of this tradition was influential in preindustrial England
during the formative years of defamation law. This was the view that
reputation was a form of honor.4 8 The concept of honor has many
aspects,4 9 but the kind of honor that was most important for the development of defamation law may be defined as a form of reputation in which
an individual personally identifies with the normative characteristics of a
43. See PROSSER & KEETON, supra note 26, at 962-68.
44.
RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 633 (1977).
45. PROSSER & KEETON, supra note 26, at 964-65.
46. PROVERBS 22:1.
47. See W. SHAKESPEARE, OTHELLO, supra note 7.
48. See C.L. BARBER, THE IDEA OF HONOUR IN THE ENGLISH DRAMA: 1591-1700 13 (1957);
G.D. SQUIBB, THE HIGH COURT OF CHIVALRY: A STUDY OF THE CIVIL LAW IN ENGLAND (1959);
Fletcher, Honour, Reputation and Local Officeholding in Elizabethian and Stuart England, in
ORDER AND DISORDER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND (A. Fletcher & J. Stevenson eds. 1985);
James, English Politicsand the Concept of Honour 1485-1642, PAST & PRESENT, 1 (Supp. 3, 1978);
Marston, Gentry Honor and Royalism in Early Stuart England, 13 J. BRIT. STUD. 21 (1973);
O'Malley, From FeudalHonour to Bourgeouis Reputation: Ideology, Law and the Rise of Industrial
Capitalism, 15 Soc: J. BRIT. Soc. ASS'N. 79 (1981).
49. See Pitt-Rivers, Honor, in 6 INT'L ENCYCLOPEDIA SOC. Sci. 503, 503-11 (1968).
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW
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particular social role and in return personally receives from others the
regard and estimation that society accords to that role." An individual
does not earn or create this kind of honor through effort or labor; he
claims a right to it by virtue of the status with which society endows his
social role.5 1 For example a king does not work to attain the honor of his
kingship, but rather benefits from the honor which society attributes to
his position. The price of this benefit is that society expects him to aspire
to "personify" these attributes and to make them part of his personal
honor.5 2
The anthropologist John Davis has observed that the "essential
characteristics of honour are"
first that it is a system of stratification: it describes the distribution of
wealth in a social idiom, and prescribes appropriate behaviour for people
at the various points in the hierarchy; it entails acceptance of superordination and subordination. Second, it is an absolute system ....
Third, it does seem to be characteristic of honour that it is associated
with integrity: the whole man is contemplated.5 3
Honor differs from the concept of reputation as property in each of these
characteristics. Whereas reputation as property presupposes the equality
of all individuals before the marketplace, honor presupposes that individuals are unequal. An individual's honor is but the personal reflection of
the status which society ascribes to his social position. Individuals are
therefore inherently unequal because they occupy different social roles.
It is characteristic of honor that these social roles are hierarchically
arranged. Thus Montesquieu theorized that "honor" is the principal
"spring" of monarchies, because "it is the nature of honor to aspire to
preferments and distinguishing titles," and "[a] monarchical government
54
supposeth ...preeminences, ranks, and likewise a noble descent."
Whereas reputation as property assumes that the value of reputation
fluctuates according to individual effort and market conditions, reputation as honor is fixed. Different social positions will be more or less honorific, and within each social position either one will have the honor
which is due that position, or one will not and be accordingly dishonored. Honor cannot be converted into a continuous medium of exchange.
It cannot be bought and sold like goodwill, but is instead attached to
50. For a discussion of the relationship between the concept of honor and the nature of status
groups, see M. WEBER, supra note 20, at 186-88.
51.
Pitt-Rivers, Honour and Social Status, in HONOUR AND SHAME: THE VALUES OF THE
MEDITERRANEAN 21-22, 35 (J.G. Peristiany ed. 1966).
52. Id. at 22. See J.K. CAMPBELL, Honour and the Devil, in HONOUR AND SHAME: THE
VALUES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN, supra note 51, at 149.
53. J. DAVIS, PEOPLE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN: AN ESSAY IN COMPARATIVE SOCIAL
ANTHROPOLOGY 98 (1977).
54.
MONTESQUIEU, THE SPIRIT OF THE LAWS 121-22 (D.W. Carrithers ed. 1977).
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
specific social roles." It can be forfeited by improper behavior, but it
cannot be individually created. It is a matter of either fulfilling or failing
to fulfill the requirements of one's social position.
Whereas reputation as property presupposes that individual identity
is distinct from reputation, in the sense that an individual can always
construct a new reputation, honor is a matter that swallows "the whole
man." "The concept of honor implies that identity is essentially, or at
least importantly, linked to institutional roles." 5 6 Conversely, "dishonor
is a fall from grace in the most comprehensive sense-loss of face in the
community, but also loss of self and separation from the basic norms that
govern human life."5 7
The Purest Treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation; that away,
Men are but guilded loam or painted clay.
A jewel in a ten-times-barr'd chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.
Mine honour is my life, both grow in one,
58
Take honour from me and my life is done.
The value of honor is the value of a meaningful life, and for that reason
its worth cannot be measured by the marketplace. As stated in the report
of De Libellis Famosis, one of "the earliest authorities upon the law of
libel of any importance,"5 9 a good name "ought to be more precious"
than life itself.6
The concept of honor presupposes an image of society in which
ascribed social roles are pervasive and well established, and in which
such roles provide the point of reference both for the ascription of social
status6" and for the normative standards of personal conduct. The soci55. The practice in preindustrial England of buying and selling honorific titles was widely
perceived to be disreputable, in large part because it attempted to convert status into money. For
example in 1626 the House of Commons complained that the practice " ' extremely deflowers the
flowers of the Crown; for it makes them cheap to all beholders'; it deprives the Crown of the best and
cheapest way of rewarding great public servants, since it brings such rewards into contempt; it makes
men pursue money rather than merit; 'It introduceth a strange confusion, mingling the meaner with
the more pure and refined metal'; in short, 'It's a prodigious scandal to this nation.'" Quoted and
summarized in L. STONE, THE CRISIS OF THE ARISTOCRACY 120 (1965).
56. P. BERGER, B. BERGER & H. KELLNER, THE HOMELESS MIND: MODERNIZATION AND
CONSCIOUSNESS 90 (1973).
57.
58.
Id. at 87. See N. ELIAS, THE COURT SOCIETY 95-96 (E. Jephcott trans. 1983).
W. SHAKESPEARE, RICHARD II, act I, scene i, 11.177-83.
59. 2 J.F. STEPHEN, A HISTORY OF THE CRIMINAL LAW OF ENGLAND 304 (1883).
60. 3 Co. Rep. 254, 255, pt. v, fol. 125, 77 Eng. Rep. 250, 251 (1605). "As the soule is more
precious than the bodie; so it is greater offence to take away any mans good name, which refresheth
the soule, then to defraude him of his foode, that sustaineth but the bodie." B. RICH, FAULTES
FAULTS AND NOTHING ELSE BUT FAULTS 13 (M. Wolfe Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints ed.
1965) (1606).
61. For a discussion of the concept of ascribed status, see R. LINTON, THE STUDY OF MAN
113-31 (1936).
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ety of preindustrial England had many of these characteristics; 62 borrowing from F.M.L. Thompson's description of eighteenth-century England,
'63
I shall refer to this kind of social structure as a "deference society."
Defamation law would operate differently in a deference society
than in a market society. In the latter, reputation is a quintessentially
private possession; it is created by individual effort and is of importance
primarily to those who have created it. Reputation's claim to legal protection is neither greater nor less than the claim to public protection of
similar private goods. The preservation of honor in a deference society,
on the other hand, entails more than the protection of merely individual
interests. Since honor is not created by individual labor, but instead by
shared social perceptions that transcend the behavior of particular persons, honor is "a public good, not merely a private possession. ' 'M An
insult to the king involves not only injury to the king's personal interests,
but also damage to the social status with which society has invested the
role of kingship.
The protection of honor thus involves the maintenance of "the consensus of the society with regard to the order of precedence."" 5 To serve
this function, defamation law must define and enforce the ascribed status
of social roles. This function can be perceived in the early common law,
in which words that "would not be actionable in the case of a common
person, yet when spoken in disgrace of... high and respectable charac-
ters.., amount to an atrocious injury."66 The function was epitomized
in the law of seditious libel, which punished as a crime any speech "that
may tend to lessen [the King] in the esteem of his subjects, may weaken
his government, or may raise jealousies between him and his people."67
62.
STONE,
63.
See H. PERKIN, THE ORIGINS OF MODERN ENGLISH SOCIETY 1780-1880 24-25 (1969); L.
supra note 55, at 21.
F.M.L. THOMPSON, ENGLISH LANDED SOCIETY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 7, 23
(1963).
64. Bellah, The Meaning of Reputation in American Society, 74 CALIF. L. REV. 743, 745
(1986). Consider, in this light, Francis Holt's early treatise on libel law, which contains eleven
chapters describing different kinds of libel, ranging from "Libels against the Christian Religion" to
"Libels against the King's Government." F. HOLT, THE LAW OF LIBEL (London 1816). Only one
of these eleven chapters concerns "Libels against Private Persons."
65. J. Pitt-Rivers, supra note 51, at 38.
66. W. BLACKSTONE, supra note 10, at 123. See F. HOLT, supra note 64, at 90: "The offence of
libel and slander is proportionately more criminal as it presumes to reach persons to whom special
veneration is due. The diminution of their credit is a public mischief, and the state itself suffers in
their becoming the objects of scorn ...."
67. W. BLACKSTONE, supra note 10, at 123; see W.B. ODGERS, A DIGEST OF THE LAW OF
LIBEL AND SLANDER 479-98 (4th ed. 1905). In 1724 Sergeant William Hawkins could summarize
the law of defamation as reaching its apex in the crime of seditious libel:
Nor can there be any Doubt, but that a Writing which defames private Persons only, is as
much a Libel as that which defames Persons intrusted with a Publick Capacity, inasmuch
as it manifestly tends to create ill Blood, and to cause a Disturbance of the Publick Peace;
However, it is certain, That it is a very high Aggravation of a Libel that it tends to
scandalize the Government, by reflecting on those who are intrusted with the
19861
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
Seditious libel protected "not only the royal family and other dignitaries
in person, but also certain groups which symbolize or represent the
'State.'
"68
In defining and enforcing the ascribed status of social roles, defamation law is "authoritative,1 69 in the sense that it speaks with the full force
of public power. This means that in a deference society defamation law
has the potential to be used either as a potent method for reaffirming the
importance to the whole society of the status of particular social roles, or
as an instrument for the forceful imposition of such status. The tension
between these two functions is illustrated by the enactment of Fox's Libel
Act in 1792.70 Prior to the Act, judges in eighteenth-century England
had attempted strictly to confine the discretion of juries in criminal trials
for seditious libel. Judges decided whether the communication at issue
was seditious and whether it had been published with criminal intent.7 1
Virtually all that was left to juries was the empty task of determining
whether the defendant had in fact published the offending communication. 72 The Act was a "momentous change in the law of libel,"' 73 giving
juries the power to return a general verdict and hence to exercise their
power of nullification.74 In essence, therefore, the Act ensured that
judges, as officers of the crown, could not use the law of seditious libel to
impose a view of ascribed hierarchical status not shared by the community at large.
From the perspective of an individual who has been dishonored by a
libel or slander, the function of defamation law cannot be simply to provide compensation for injuries "capable of pecuniary admeasurement." 7 5
The loss of honor is a loss of status and personal identity; the value of a
good name, which "ought to be more precious" than life,7 6 can scarcely
be comprehended by pecuniary damages. Instead the essential objective
of defamation law must be conceived as the restoration of honor. I shall
use the term "vindication" to refer to the process by which honor is
Administration of Publick Affairs, which doth not only endanger the Publick Peace, as all
other Libels do, by stirring up the Parties immediately concerned in it to do Acts of
Revenge, but also has a direct Tendency to breed in the People a Dislike of their
Governors, and incline them to Faction and Sedition.
W. HAWKINS, A TREATISE OF THE PLEAS OF THE CROWN 194 (2d ed. 1724).
68. Riesman, supra note 28, at 735-36.
69. C.B. MACPHERSON, supra note 25, at 49; see Pitt-Rivers, supra note 49, at 504.
70. See J.F. STEPHEN, supra note 59, at 319-47.
71. See Green, The Jury, Seditious Libel, and the CriminalLaw, in JURIES, LIBEL & JUSTICE:
THE ROLE OF JURIES IN SEVENTEENTH- AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TRIALS FOR LIBEL AND
SLANDER 40-41 (1984).
72. L. LEVY, EMERGENCE OF A FREE PRESS 11-12 (1985).
73.
T. PLUCKNETT, A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE COMMON LAW 500 (5th ed. 1956).
74. Green, supra note 71, at 44-45.
75. T. STARKIE, supra note 14, at xx.
76. De Libellis Famosis, 3 Co. Rep. 254, 255, pt. v, fol. 125, 77 Eng. Rep. 250, 251 (1605).
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restored. Vindication should be understood as the mirror image of the
"denunciation of wrong doing" 77 which occurs in the criminal law. The
conviction and punishment of a criminal defendant is in effect a "status
degradation ceremony" in which the defendant "becomes in the eyes of
his condemners literally a different and new person."' 78 The vindication
of the honor of a libel victim can be thought of as the converse, as a
"status rehabilitation ceremony."
In order to understand how defamation law can vindicate honor, it
must be recalled that at traditional common law a libel victim was given
'79
a choice of "two remedies; one by indictment and another by action.
If the person elected to proceed by way of criminal prosecution, the truth
or falsity of the libel was deemed immaterial,80 and the defendant was
"not allowed to alledge the truth of it by way of justification.""1 Thus
the libel victim achieved vindication not by disproving the libel, but
rather by punishing the libeller. This is consistent with the earliest mean'
ing of "vindication," which is "the action of avenging or revenging. 82
There is a clear analogy between the traditional common law of criminal
libel and the "Code of Honor" under which gentlemen duelists sought to
"avenge insults" and thereby achieve "the restoration of wounded
honor."8 3 As the old saw would have it, "The laundry of honor is only
77.
ROYAL COMMISSION ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, MINUTES OF EVIDENCE, NINTH DAY,
207 (Dec. 1, 1949) (Memorandum Submitted by the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Denning) reprintedin S.
KADISH, S. SCHULHOFER & M. PAULSEN, CRIMINAL LAW AND ITS PROCESSES: CASES AND
MATERIALS 190 (4th ed. 1983).
78. Garfinkel, Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies, 61 AM. J. Soc. 420, 420-21
(1956).
79. W. BLACKSTONE, supra note 10, at 125. See F. HOLT, supra note 64, at 241. A person
who had been slandered did not have the option of proceeding by way of criminal indictment, unless
he was "one of the great men of the realm," in which case the slander was deemed Scandalum
Magnatum and punishable by criminal prosecution. T. STARKIE, supra note 14, at 145-47. For a
rare example of the use of Scandalum Magnatum in America, see J. BENTON JR., A NOTABLE
LIBEL CASE: THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF THEODORE LYMAN JR. BY DANIEL WEBSTER 35
(1904).
80. See De Libellis Famosis, 3 Co. Rep. 254, 255, pt. v, fol. 125, 77 Eng. Rep. 250, 251 (1605)
("It is not material whether the libel be true.").
81. W. BLACKSTONE, supra note 10, at 126 (footnote omitted). For a discussion of the
American cases, see 2 J. KENT, COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW 18-24 (2d ed. New York
1832). In the view of the early common law, "the greater the truth, the greater the libel." Riesman,
supra note 28, at 735.
82. 8 OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 496 (James Murray ed. 1910). In modern English this
sense remains present in the word "vindictive," which stems from the same root as vindication.
83. M. HINDUS, PRISON AND PLANTATION 42-48 (1980). See B. MANDEVILLE, AN ENQUIRY
INTO THE ORIGIN OF HONOUR 64-75 (London 1732); W.O. STEVENS, PISTOLS AT TEN PACES: THE
STORY OF THE CODE OF HONOR IN AMERICA (1940); Andrew, The Code ofHonor and its Critics:
The Opposition to Duelling in England, 1700-1850, 5 Soc. HIST. (U.K.) 409 (1980).
In his Principlesof PenalLaw, Jeremy Bentham gave considerable thought to the question of
what legal "remedies for offences against honour" could create the "honorary satisfaction" provided
by "the practice of duelling." I THE WORKS OF JEREMY BENTHAM 376-80 (1859). Bentham listed
12 different punishments for such offenses, ranging from "[t]he offender kneeling before the party
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
4
bleached with blood.",8
If the libelled person elected to proceed by way of civil action, however, the situation was quite different. The defendant could not be punished, but only compelled to pay damages. Although the stated purpose
of the award of damages was to permit "the plaintiff ... to recover by
way of compensation," 85 the concept of reputation as honor would
require these damages also to be understood as part of the process by
which the plaintiff's honor was vindicated.8 6 Thus in an early case in
which a defendant had said of an English Lord that he was "an unworthy man, and acts against law and reason," the jury awarded four thousand pounds in damages to the plaintiff not, it was said, "that he was
damnified so much, but that he might have the greater opportunity to
shew himself noble in the remitting of them."'87
Analysis is further complicated by the fact that truth was (and is) a
complete defense to the civil tort of libel.8 8 Thus the relief provided by
the civil action could not be simply vindication in the primitive sense of
"avenging," but rather in the more modem sense of "justifying."89 The
issue of truth shifts inquiry away from the impersonal attributes of social
roles, which cannot be true or false, and toward the particular conduct of
the individuals who occupy those roles. In contrast to the criminal reminjured," to "[e]mblematical masks, with a snake's head in cases of fraud - - with a Magpie's or a
Parrot's head in cases of temerity." Id. at 381. The remedies were to "be adapted to the gravity of
the cases, and furnish suitable reparations to the different social distinctions; for it is not proper to
treat in the same manner an insult offered to a common person and to a magistrate, to an ecclesiastic
and to a military man, to a young and to an old person." Id. The purpose of the remedies was to
humiliate the offender and to "furnish to the injured party actual pleasures, and pleasures of
remembrance, which would compensate for the mortification of the insult." Id. The injured party
would thus receive "vindictive satisfaction," which Bentham defined as "a pleasure of vengeance."
Id. at 382-83. Bentham believed that insofar as the law provided such "measures suited to the
protection of honour, the use of duels will diminish; and they will cease entirely, when these
honorary satisfactions agree exactly with opinion, and are faithfully administered." Id. at 382.
84. "La lessive de l'honneurne se coule qu'au sang." Pitt-Rivers, supranote 51, at 25 (footnote
omitted); see id. at 24-31.
85. Lord Townsend v. Hughes, 86 Eng. Rep. 994, 994 (1677).
86. "[C]ivil actions for slander and libel," like criminal actions, "developed in early ages as a
substitute for the duel." I. BRANT, THE BILL OF RIGHTS: ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING 502 (1965);
see P.F. CARTER-RUCK, supra note 7, at 39 (1972).
87. Lord Townsend v. Hughes, 86 Eng. Rep. at 994 (1677). Cf. Staves, Money for Honor:
Damagesfor CriminalConversation, in 11 STUDIES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CULTURE 279 (H.
Payne ed. 1982).
88. See Holdsworth, Defamation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,41 L.Q. REv. 13,
28 (1925). There is some ambiguous authority for the conclusion that in the early days of the
common law truth was not a defense to a civil action for libel. See Ray, Truth: A Defense to Libel,
16 MINN. L. REV. 43, 49-50 (1931). There are also some relatively modern cases holding that truth
is not a complete defense. See, eg., Hutchins v. Page, 75 N.H. 215, 72 A. 689 (1909). For an
examination of these cases, see Franklin, The Originsand Constitutionalityof Limitations on Truth
as a Defense in Tort Law, 16 STAN. L. REV. 789 (1964).
89. "The action of making, proving, or accounting just." 8 OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY
496 (James Murray ed. 1910).
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edy, in which truth was irrelevant and the focus of the proceeding was
therefore clearly and narrowly on the defendant's affront to the honorific
status of the plaintiff's role, the focus of the civil proceeding was
expanded to include the possible derelictions of the plaintiff. Since an
individual could be dishonored for failing to live up to the requirements
of his social role, the plaintiff could be required to demonstrate that he
had not acted dishonorably before being entitled to receive civil damages.
The concept of reputation as honor is consonant with aspects of
defamation law that are difficult to understand from the perspective of
reputation as property. For example, the common law distinction
between defamatory and nondefamatory communications, which in a
market society would leave some actual injuries inexplicably uncompensated, can be conceptualized as a method of distinguishing between those
communications that are relevant to the question of honor, and those
that are not. Similarly, the common law presumption of damages, which
in a market society is simply an undeserved windfall to the plaintiff, can
be conceived as empowering juries to pursue the "noncompensatory" 9 °
end of vindicating the plaintiff's honor in the community.
The kind of deference society presupposed by the concept of reputation as honor could not be said to have existed in anything like a pure
form in preindustrial England.9 1 Even as Coke was reporting De Libellis
Famosis, Shakespeare, in the accents of King Lear's darkest vision, had
seen the beggar run from the farmer's dog, and had beheld "the great
image of authority - a dog's obeyed in office." 92 This dissociation of the
person from the office is incompatible with the very premises of a deference society. It is in fact more characteristic of our own social world,
dominated as it is by a rational legal authority in which bureaucratic
office is defined precisely by its contrast to the private identity of officeholders.93 If in a deference society an attack upon the person of the king
was equivalent to an attack on the institution of monarchy, we are now
more likely to distinguish between an attack on the president and an
attack on the institution of the presidency.
As this example illustrates, however, we still have a lingering sense
that roles and individuals are interdependent.9 4 De Tocqueville, commenting on the demise of honor in the United States, observed that "the
90. Anderson, Reputation, Compensation, and Proof 25 WM.& MARY L. REV. 747, 750
(1984).
91.
See, e.g., C. HILL, THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN: RADICAL IDEAS DURING THE
ENGLISH REVOLUTION 32-45 (1972).
92. W. SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR, act IV, scene vi, II. 152-56.
93. See generally M. WEBER, supra note 11, at 217-23.
94. See, e.g., Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 634 (1952) (Jackson, J.,
concurring) ("The opinions ofjudges, no less than executives and publicists, often suffer the infirmity
of... confounding the permanent executive office with its temporary occupant.").
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
dissimilarities and inequalities of men gave rise to the notion of honor;
that notion is weakened in proportion as these differences are obliterated,
and with them it would disappear."9 5 Our contemporary attitude toward
honor is for this reason bound up with our commitment to egalitarianism. In some institutions, like the military, egalitarian ideals play a relatively small role, and consequently the concept of personal honor, as
defined by a hierarchical structure of rigidly defined social roles, remains
of great importance.9 6 In other institutions, like the profession of
medicine, we remain genuinely ambivalent whether the reputation of a
doctor stems solely from her achievements, or whether it inheres in part
in the magical status of simply being a physician. As these illustrations
suggest, the concept of reputation as honor is not merely an important
analytic tool for understanding the early common law of criminal libel,
and perhaps also the development of the civil side of the tort, but it may
also have significant implications for understanding the ways in which
our own law of defamation is actually practiced.
C. Reputation as Dignity
When the United States Supreme Court attempts to characterize the
nature of a state's interest in protecting reputation, it frequently relies
upon a passage in Justice Stewart's concurring opinion in Rosenblatt v.
97
Baer:
The right of a man to the protection of his own reputation from
unjustified invasion and wrongful hurt reflects no more than our basic
concept of the essential dignity and worth of every human being-a concept at the root of any decent system of ordered liberty. The protection
of private personality, like the protection of life itself, is left primarily to
the individual States under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. But this
does not mean that the right is entitled to any less recognition by this
Court as a basic of our constitutional system.
The rhetorical power of the passage is undeniable. It has proved enormously influential,9" and can fairly be characterized as an authentic con95. II A. DE TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 255 (H. Reeve trans. 1945).
96. See G. BEST, HONOUR AMONG MEN AND NATIONS (1982); M. FELD, THE STRUCTURE
OF VIOLENCE: ARMED FORCES AS SOCIAL SYSTEMS 98-102 (1977); R. GABRIEL, To SERVE WITH
HONOR (1982); M. JANOWITZ, THE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER 215-32 (1960).
97. 383 U.S. 75, 92 (1966) (Stewart, J., concurring). See Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v.
Hepps, 106 S. Ct. 1558, 1562 (1986); id. at 1566-67 (Stevens, J., dissenting); Dun & Bradstreet, Inc.
v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 105 S. Ct. 2939, 2945 (1985) (opinion of Powell, J.); id. at 2951 (White,
J., concurring); id. at 2964 n.16 (Brennan, J., dissenting); Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 448, 471
(1976) (Brennan, J., dissenting); Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 341 (1974); id. at 402
(White, J., dissenting); Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U.S. 29, 48 (1971) (opinion of
Brennan, J.); id. at 78 (opinion of Marshall, J.).
98. See, e.g., Idaho Norland Corp. v. Caelter Indus., 509 F. Supp. 1070, 1072 (D. Col. 1981);
Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union, 508 F. Supp. 1249, 1270 (D. Mass. 1981), rey'd, 692 F.2d 189 (1st
Cir. 1982), aff'd, 466 U.S. 485 (1984); Martin Marietta Corp. v. Evening Star Newspaper, 417 F.
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temporary expression of common law understanding of the law of
defamation.
The passage, however, appears to rest on a paradox, for it is not
immediately clear how reputation, which is social and public, and which
resides in the "common or general estimate of a person," can possibly
affect the "essential dignity" of a person's "private personality." The
gulf that appears to separate reputation from dignity can be spanned only
if defamation law contains an implicit theory of the relationship between
the private and public aspects of the self.
Precisely such a theory was developed by the founders of the symbolic interactionist school of American sociology, Charles H. Cooley9 9
and George Herbert Mead."° Mead in particular developed a detailed
and persuasive account of the interdependence of individual personality
and general social perspectives. For Mead the image of the game was of
particular significance. In learning a game, a child cannot simply study
one role, like that of a third baseman, but must instead come to understand all the different roles that comprise the game, together with their
relationship to each other. Only by thus internalizing the perspectives of
all the game's participants can the child learn to engage in the common
endeavor that is baseball. In a similar way a person learns how to live in
a society by understanding the different roles by which it is comprised.
The internalization of these various perspectives is what constitutes an
individual's identity:
The game is then an illustration of the situation out of which an
organized personality arises. In so far as the child does take the attitude
of the other and allows that attitude of the other to determine the thing
he is going to do with reference to a common end, he is becoming an
organic member of society. He is taking over the morale of that society
and is becoming an essential member of it....
Supp. 947, 955 (D.D.C. 1976); Rancho La Costa, Inc. v. Superior Court, 106 Cal. App. 3d 646, 655,
165 Cal. Rptr. 347, 353 (1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 902 (1981); Holter v. WLCY T.V., Inc., 366
So. 2d 445, 451 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1978); Sindorf v. Jacron Sales Co., 27 Md. App. 53, 341 A.2d
856, 877 (1975), aff'd, 276 Md. 580, 350 A.2d 688 (1976); Stone v. Essex County Newspapers, Inc.,
367 Mass. 849, 851, 330 N.E.2d 161, 168 (1975); Cefalu v. Globe Newspaper Co., 8 Mass. App. Ct.
71, 73, 391 N.E.2d 935, 938 (1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1060 (1980); Jadwin v. Minneapolis Star
and Tribune Co., 367 N.W.2d 476, 483 (Minn. 1985); Hyde v. City of Columbia, 637 S.W.2d 251,
270 n.25 (Mo. Ct. App. 1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1226 (1983); Anton v. St. Louis Suburban
Newspapers, Inc., 598 S.W.2d 493, 498 (Mo. Ct. App. 1980); Canino v. New York News, Inc., 96
N.J. 189, 196-97, 475 A.2d 528, 532 (1984); Maressa v. New Jersey Monthly, 89 N.J. 176, 201, 445
A.2d 376, 389 (1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 907 (1982); Schermerhorn v. Rosenberg, 73 A.D.2d 276,
283, 426 N.Y.S.2d 274, 281 (1980); Greenberg v. CBS, Inc., 69 A.D.2d 693, 700, 419 N.Y.S.2d 988,
991 (1979); Rutt v. Bethlehems' Globe Publishing Co., 335 Pa. Super. 163, 185, 484 A.2d 72, 83
(1984).
99. See C. COOLEY, THE Two MAJOR WORKS OF CHARLES H. COOLEY: SOCIAL
ORGANIZATION, HUMAN NATURE AND THE SOCIAL ORDER (1956).
100. See G.H. MEAD, MIND, SELF, AND SOCIETY (1934).
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
What goes to make up the organized self is the organization of the
attitudes which are common to the group. A person is a personality
because he belongs to a community, because he takes over the institutions
of that community into his own conduct. He takes its language as the
medium by which he gets his personality, and then through a process of
taking the different roles that all the others furnish he comes to get the
attitude of the members of the community. Such, in a certain sense, is
the structure of a man's personality .... The structure, then, on which
the self is built is this response which is common to all, for one has to be
a member of a community to be a self.101
Erving Goffman, the most influential modem writer in the symbolic
interactionist tradition, has noted that the socialization process described
by Mead should not be understood as having a definite terminus, a point
at which an independent and mature self emerges as if from a chrysalis.
Identity is rather continuously being constituted through social interactions. 0 2 For Goffman these interactions take the form of rules of "deference and demeanor."' 0 3 Rules of deference define conduct by which a
person conveys appreciation "to a recipient of this recipient, or of something of which this recipient is taken as a symbol, extension, or agent.""
Rules of demeanor define conduct by which a person expresses "to those
in his immediate presence that he is a person of certain desirable or undesirable qualities."' 0 5 Rules of deference and demeanor constitute "rules
of conduct which bind the actor and the recipient together" and "are the
bindings of society."' 0 6 By following these rules, individuals both confirm the social order in which they live and constitute "ritual" and
"sacred" aspects of their own identity."0 v The price of this process, however, is that each "individual must rely on others to complete the picture
of him of which he himself is allowed to paint only certain parts."
Each individual is responsible for the demeanor image of himself and the
deference image of others, so that for a complete man to be expressed,
individuals must hold hands in a chain of ceremony, each giving deferentially with proper demeanor to the one on the right what will be received
101.
Id. at 159, 162; see id. at 152-64.
102.
E. GOFFMAN, INTERACTION RITUAL 84-85 (1967).
103. Id. at 47.
104. Id. at 56.
105. Id. at 77.
106. Id. at 90.
107. Id. at 91. In this formulation Goffman was influenced by Emil Durkheim:
Morality would no longer be morality if it had no elements of religion.... The respect
which we have for the human being is distinguishable only very slightly from that which
the faithful of all religions have for the objects they deem sacred. This characteristic,
sacredness, can be expressed ... in secular terms....
...
Society has consecrated the individual and made him pre-eminently worthy of
respect.
E. DURKHEIM, SOCIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 69, 72 (D. Pocock trans. 1953).
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW
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deferentially from the one on the left. While it may be true that the
individual has a unique self all his own, evidence of this possession is
thoroughly a product of joint ceremonial labor, the part expressed
through the individual's demeanor being no more significant than the
part conveyed by others through their deferential behavior toward
him.10 8
Goffiman's account provides a theory for connecting the law of defamation to the concept of dignity. Dignity, after all, is a ritual and ceremonial aspect of the self that we associate with the self's integrity,10 9
which is to say with its completeness. Dignity can only be confirmed by
the respect that is its due. 110 Yet in Goffman's view dignity is always at
risk, since in any social transaction the "chain of ceremony" may be broken, and hence a "complete man" may fail to be socially constituted. In
this way our own sense of intrinsic self-worth, stored in the deepest
recesses of our "private personality," is perpetually dependent upon the
ceremonial observance by those around us of rules of deference and
demeanor. The law of defamation can be conceived as a method by
which society polices breaches of its rules of deference and demeanor,
thereby protecting the dignity of its members. When rules of deference
and demeanor are embodied in speech, and hence are subject to the law
of defamation, I shall call them "rules of civility."
A preliminary objection to this concept of reputation as dignity is
that defamation law will not impose liability for breach of a civility rule
unless there has been a "publication to a third party," ' whereas
Goffman makes clear that rules of deference and demeanor are especially
characteristic of face-to-face interactions. If the function of defamation
law is to protect individual dignity, and if individual dignity can be compromised by the violation of civility rules in face-to-face interactions, 1 I it
is not clear why defamation law refuses to impose liability in such
situations.
The response to this objection requires us to probe somewhat more
E. GOFFMAN, supra note 102, at 84-85.
See Pritchard, Human Dignity and Justice, 82 ETHICS 299, 300-02 (1972).
See, eg., Spiegelberg, Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary Philosophy, 9 PHIL.
1/2) 39, 58-61 (March 1971); Edel, Humanist Ethics and the Meaningof Human Dignity, in
MORAL PROBLEMS IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY (P. Kurz, ed. 1969); E. DURKHEIM, supra note
108.
109.
110.
F. (Nos.
107, at 89; A. GUTMANN, LIBERAL EQUALITY 18 (1980).
111. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 558(b) (1977).
112. This is no doubt the basis of Alexander Bickel's observation that there is "a kind of
cursing, assaultive speech that amounts to almost physical aggression, bullying that is no less
punishing because it is simulated." A. BICKEL, THE MORALITY OF CONSENT 72 (1975). In this
regard it is fascinating to note that the Anglo-Saxon law from which common law defamation
evolved "was particularly concerned with insulting words addressed by one person to another." T.
PLUCKNETT, supra note 73, at 483. The requirement that the communication be published to a third
party emerged only gradually. Id. at 484.
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
deeply into the relationship between civility and dignity. Goffman notes
that breaking a rule of conduct creates an ambiguous situation, for
two individuals run the risk of becoming discredited: one with an obligation, who should have governed himself by the rule; the other with an
expectation, who should have been treated in a particular way because of
13
this governance. Both actor and recipient are threatened.'
In a purely dyadic exchange, the breach of a rule of civility will have
equivocal significance, because it is not clear whether the dignity of the
recipient or the social competence of the actor has been impaired. When
the breach occurs in the presence of third parties, however, the audience
is in effect invited to choose between these two interpretations. If the
audience sides with the actor, the recipient will be discredited and stigmatized' 14 as a person unworthy of being treated with civility; in effect
he will be subject to "exclusion from belonging as a respected and
responsible"1' 15 member of society.
The dignity that defamation law protects is thus the respect (and
self-respect) that arises from full membership in society. Rules of civility
are the means by which society defines and maintains this dignity. Conversely, rules of civility are also the means by which society distinguishes
members from nonmembers. Persons who are socially acceptable will be
included within the forms of respect that constitute social dignity; persons who are stigmatized as deviants will be excluded. The maintenance
of such social boundaries is an important method by which societies
"develop an orderly sense of their own cultural identity" and hence preserve "the stability of social life."' 16 Implicit in the concept of reputation
as dignity, therefore, is the potential for a dual function for defamation
law: the protection of an individual's interest in dignity, which is to say
his interest in being included within the forms of social respect; and the
enforcement of society's interest in its rules of civility, which is to say its
interest in defining and maintaining the contours of its own social
7
constitution. 11
113.
114.
E. GOFFMAN, supra note 102, at 51.
In Goffman's view, to stigmatize someone is to view that person in a way that is "deeply
discrediting." E.
(1963).
115.
GOFFMAN, STIGMA: NOTES ON THE MANAGEMENT OF SPOILED IDENTITY 3
Karst, Paths to Belonging: The Constitution and CulturalIdentity, 64 N.C.L. REV. 303,
323 (1986).
116. K.
ERIKSON, WAYWARD PURITANS: A STUDY IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF DEVIANCE 13
(1966); see E. DURKHEIM, THE DIVISION OF LABOR IN SOCIETY 108-09 (G. Simpson trans. 1933).
117. Gossip is also a means by which communities (informally) enforce communal norms, and
anthropologists view such gossip as "part of the very blood and tissue" of "community life," and a
central mechanism by which a community is "held together and maintains its values." Gluckman,
Gossip and Scandal, 4 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 307, 308 (1963). Gossip has the power of
"interpreting a community to itself." P.M. SPACKs, Gossip 231 (1985). See Zimmerman, Requiem
for a Heavyweight: A Farewell to Warren and Brandeis'sPrivacy Tort, 68 CORN. L. REV. 291, 326-37
(1983).
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What it means for the law to perform the first of these functions, the
protection of individual dignity, is by no means clear. Dignity is not like
property, for dignity is not the result of individual achievement and its
value cannot be measured in the marketplace. It is instead "essential"
and intrinsic in "every human being.""1 8 It is inaccurate, therefore, to
speak of defamation law as "compensating" for the loss of dignity. Dignity cannot be restored through money damages.1 19 The jury which
refused to award compensatory damages to a plaintiff expelled from Post
12 of the Polish Army Veterans Association because of an accusation of
embezzlement illustrates the point. The jury sent the following written
note to the Court:
He who steals my purse, steals trash; but, he who steals my reputation
steals my life. Therefore, as ...jurors we feel that no amt. of gold or
silver can compensate for a man's reputation & if Mr. Laniecki [the
plaintiff] is publically [sic] cleared and reinstated into (his) Post 12, or the
Post of his choice this would be reward enough. We also wish to give
120
nothing for libel, but grant $5000 for punitive damages.
It is also impossible to conceive of dignity as being "vindicated" by a
duel or by the early procedures of criminal defamation. Methods that
have been consonant with the restoration of honor, therefore, do not
seem consistent with our conception of dignity.
What it means to protect dignity is of course dependent upon what
it means to lose dignity. If defamation law protects against the loss of
dignity that occurs when an individual is potentially excluded from the
embrace of a community's rules of civility, then, from the plaintiff's
point of view, protection of dignity must imply a confirmation of membership in that community. Defamation law is an excellent vehicle for
that confirmation, because it provides an occasion for a court to resolve
the ambiguity created when rules of civility are violated. A defamation
trial can from this perspective be viewed as an arena in which the parties
are free to present "competing interpretations of behavior":"2 ' the plaintiff contending that the defamation should be explained by the social
incompetence and inappropriate behavior of the defendant; the defendant
urging that the lack of respect implied by the defamation should be
understood as justified by the plaintiff's conduct. The plaintiff's dignity
is rehabilitated if the court authoritatively determines that the defend118.
Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 92 (1966) (Stewart, J., concurring).
119.
See M.
IGNATIEFF, THE NEEDS OF STRANGERS: AN ESSAY ON PRIVACY, SOLIDARITY,
AND THE POLITICS OF BEING HUMAN 13-14 (1984).
120. Laniecki v. Polish Army Veterans Ass'n, 331 Pa. Super. 413, 422, 480 A.2d 1101, 1105
(1984) (footnote omitted).
121. Lewis, Defamation: Reputation and Encounter, in Friedman/Rehbinder (Hrsg.), ZUR
SOZIOLOGIE
DES
GERICHTSVERFAHRENS,
RECHTSTHEORIE, Band 4, 278.
JAHRBUCH
FUR
RECHISSOZIOLGI E
UND
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
ant's departure from the rules of civility was unjustified. In effect the
court, speaking for the community at large, designates the plaintiff as
worthy of respect, thereby confirming his membership within the community. I shall refer to this process by which dignity is confirmed as one
of "rehabilitation."
The issue of truth is essential to a plaintiff's rehabilitation, for to
succeed in a defamation suit he must persuade a court of the truth of his
interpretation of events. If he fails in this task and the court agrees with
the defendant's interpretation, the plaintiff's efforts will result in an
authoritative confirmation of his own stigma.' 2 2 In either case the defamation trial will demarcate the boundaries of community membership.
For this reason it is tempting to view the second function of defamation
law, the enforcement of a community's rules of civility, as simply the
mirror image of the first, the protection of individual dignity. But this
would be a mistake. Protecting individual dignity is a matter of defending purely private interests, whereas enforcing rules of civility is a matter
of safeguarding the public good inherent in the maintenance of community identity.
The two functions are thus analytically distinct, and the shape of
common law defamation clearly indicates that the protection of the public good is an independent and important objective. This can be seen, for
example, in the common law presumption of damages. If one distinguishes between the common law's refusal to make damages an element
of the cause of action for libel and its conclusive presumption of damages, it is evident that the former is consistent with the purpose of rehabilitation, since requiring a showing of damages would leave without
redress victims of libel who had suffered no material injury. But the
irrebutable presumption of damages does not follow from the purpose of
rehabilitation, since dignity is not restored through a process of compensation. The most plausible interpretation of the presumption, therefore,
is that it serves to maintain community identity, since it creates a license
for juries to sanction defendants who trespass beyond the bounds of
propriety.
The objective of maintaining community identity is also evident in
those cases in which the common law enforces rules of civility even when
individual dignity is not in fact at risk. Thus an action for defamation
122. David Hooper notes that "[tihere are two classic examples of the perils of libel actions":
In the first, the plaintiff sued for slander when he was called a highwayman. He lost and
was arrested when he was leaving the court, tried on a charge of being a highwayman and
hanged at Newgate. In the second Oscar Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry... for
his notice about Oscar Wilde 'posing as a sodomite' ....
Wilde prosecuted, lost, and was
later tried himself and sent to prison for two years.
D. HOOPER, PUBLIC
CASES 23 (1984).
SCANDAL, ODIUM AND CONTEMPT: AN INVESTIGATION OF RECENT LIBEL
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[V ol. 74:691
will lie even if a defendant can demonstrate that the defamatory statement was not "believed by those to whom it was published." 12 3 Moreover under traditional common law rules a defendant could not defeat an
action for defamation even by proving that the plaintiff was already such
an outcast from the community that he had no reputation to lose. 124 Evidence of a plaintiff's poor reputation was admissible only in mitigation of
125
damages.
The common law takes its function of maintaining community identity so seriously that it will refuse to protect individual dignity if it determines that a particular community is not worthy of legal support. This is
illustrated by the case of Connelly v. McKay,'2 6 in which the plaintiff,
who maintained a service station and rooming house primarily patronized by interstate truck drivers, alleged that he had been slandered by a
statement that he was informing the Interstate Commerce Commission
of the names of truck drivers who were violating ICC rules. The plaintiff
claimed that the slander had resulted in damage to his business. It was
clear that his reputation, considered as property, had been adversely
affected. It was also clear that the slander alleged conduct that was heinous within the community of interstate truckers, and hence that the
plaintiff's dignity as a member of that community was at risk. Nevertheless the court refused to enforce the plaintiff's claim, saying that an allegation "of giving information of violations of the law to the proper
authorities" could not "constitute a foundation upon which to build an
127
action for slander."'
In essence the court's decision was that the law of defamation
should not be used to maintain the kind of deviant community constituted by the civility rules of interstate truckers, even though a person's
dignity within that community was clearly at issue. Connelly is of course
an extreme case, 128 but it is a particularly clear example of a more subtle
problem that defamation law must constantly face: the determination of
123. GATLEY ON LIBEL AND SLANDER, supra note 35, at 4. "If words are used which impute
discreditable conduct to my friend, he has been defamed to me, although I do not believe the
imputation, and may even know it is untrue." Hough v. London Express Newspapers, Ltd., [1940] 2
K.B. 507, 515 (per Goddard, L.J.). See Morgan v. Odhams Press Ltd., [1971] 1 W.L.R. 1239, 1253
(H.L.) (per Lord Morris). For representative American citations, see supra note 38.
124. The "libel-proof plaintiff" doctrine was first enunciated in 1975 in Cardillo v. Doubleday
& Co., 518 F.2d 638 (2d Cir. 1975). Note, The Libel-ProofPlaintiffDoctrine, 98 HARv. L. REV.
1909 (1985). The doctrine is controversial, see Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Anderson, 746 F.2d 1563,
1569-70 (D.C. Cir. 1984), rey'd on other grounds, 106 S.Ct. 2505 (1986), and "has not yet generated
extensive case law." Note, supra, at 1909.
125. GATLEY ON LIBEL AND SLANDER, supra, note 35, at 1 1414 & n.20.
126. 176 Misc. 685, 28 N.Y.S.2d 327 (1941).
127. Id. at 687, 28 N.Y.S.2d at 329.
128. It stands, however, in a rather lively tradition of such extreme cases. See, e.g., Heimerle v.
Charter, 11 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1278 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1984); Rose v. Borenstein, 119 N.Y.S.2d 288
(1953); Mawe v. Piggott, 4 Ir. R.-C.L. 54 (1869); Hallock v. Miller, 2 Barb. Ch. 630 (1848).
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
the "class of persons whose reaction to the publication is the test of the
wrongful character of the words used." 12' 9 The common law has formulated various answers to this problem. Sometimes defamation law incorporates the perspective of "a considerable and respectable class in
the community";1 3 sometimes the perspective of "right-thinking per132
sons";13 and sometimes the perspective of "society ...taken as it is."
No matter what the formulation, however, the essential question is not
the protection of individual dignity, but rather which communities the
law will assist in the maintenance of their cultural identity.
The concept of reputation as dignity, then, creates two analytically
and operationally distinct functions for defamation law: the rehabilitation of individual dignity and the maintenance of communal identity.
These two functions can in particular cases pull in opposite directions.
Both functions, however, presuppose that individual identity is in some
sense constituted by reputation, and in this regard the concept of reputation as dignity is similar to the concept of reputation as honor. But
honor is concerned with attributes of personal identity that stem from
the characteristics of particular social roles, whereas dignity is concerned
with the aspects of personal identity that stem from membership in the
general community. Hence defamation law under a regime of honor protects the status of specific social roles, whereas under a regime of dignity
it safeguards the identity of the entire community. Distinction between
social roles is accordingly the essence of honor, for it requires defamation
law to protect those aspects of a status group that distinguish it from the
rest of society. By contrast the concept of dignity is more difficult to
characterize. From the perspective of the individual its essence is inclusion, for under its regime defamation law functions to protect the ability
of individuals to be integrated into community membership. From the
perspective of society, however, its essence is constitutive, for under the
concept of dignity defamation law defines the boundaries and nature of
the general community.
At the time of the English Renaissance, the word "dignity" had a
meaning very close to that of honor. Indeed among the earliest usages of
"dignity" recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary are those that carry
the definition of "honourable or high estate, position, or estimation; honSim v. Stretch, 2 All E.R. 1237, 1240 (1936) (per Lord Atkins).
Peck v. Tribune Co., 214 U.S. 185, 190 (1909).
Kimmerele v. New York Evening Journal, Inc., 262 N.Y. 99, 186 N.E. 217 (1933); see
GATLEY ON LIBEL AND SLANDER, supra note 35, 41.
132. Van Wiginton v. Pulitzer Publishing Co., 218 F. 795, 796 (8th Cir. 1914); see Grant v.
Readers Digest, 151 F.2d 733 (2d Cir. 1945), cert. denied, 326 U.S. 797 (1946); Flood v. News &
Courier Co., 71 S.C. 112, 50 S.E. 637 (1905).
129.
130.
131.
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our, degrees of estimation, rank."' 3 3 By our own time, however, "dignity" has come to be viewed as universal and undifferentiated, as part of
the "essential ...worth of every human being."' t3 4 In his massive study
of the history of civility, Norbert Elias found that civility, like dignity,
was once associated primarily with "a courtly-aristocratic upper class,"
but that over time the practices of civility were diffused throughout the
general society. 1 35 Elias explains this diffusion as resulting from society's
growing "complexity and functional differentiation" and the consequent
"functional dependence of all on all." 13 6 This complex interdependence
led to the notion of "civilization"-an outgrowth of civility-as "a concept designating the manners and condition of existing society as a
whole."' 3 7
This image of "society as a whole" is made possible by the general
diffusion of rules of civility. It is an encompassing image of a social
entity that transcends particular roles and classes and status groupings.
And it is an image that accordingly provides an important social foundation for the contemporary perception of a universal and undifferentiated
human dignity. Unless we resort to theories of natural rights or theology, our own perception of "intrinsic" human dignity 38 can refer to
neither more nor less than the potential for every person to be admitted
to membership in a society defined by the reciprocal observance of rules
of civility. The concept of reputation as dignity, therefore, presupposes a
particular kind of society, a social world that I shall call a "communitarian society."
Communitarian societies and market societies have in common the
concept of equality. Just as in market societies all persons are equally
subordinated to the market, so in communitarian societies all persons are
equally eligible for inclusion within the community. In most other
respects, however, market and communitarian societies are radically different. In market societies individuals create their reputation; in communitarian societies individuals are in a very important sense created by
their reputation. In market societies reputation is a private good; in communitarian societies it is both a private and a public good. In market
societies reputation is a form of property whose value is determined by
133. 3 OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 356 (James Murray ed. 1933). This meaning resonates
in our own usage when, for example, we speak of the "dignity" of the office of the president.
134. Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 92 (1966). For example a modem dictionary defines
"dignity" as "intrinsic worth." WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 632 (1976).
135. N. ELIAS, POWER & CIVILITY 309 (E. Jephcott trans. 1982); see N. ELIAS, THE
CIVILIZING PROCESS (E. Jephcott trans. 1978).
136. N. ELIAS, POWER & CIVILITY, supra note 135, at 257, 296.
137. N. ELIAS, THE CIVILIZING PROCESS, supra note 135, at 44. In a similar vein, Edward
Shils has written that the essence of civility is a form of "respect for the common good," Shils,
Ideology and Civility, in THE INTELLECTUALS AND THE POWERS AND OTHER ESSAYS 60 (1972).
138. See P. BERGER, B. BERGER & H. KELLNER, supra note 56, at 89.
19861
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
the marketplace; in communitarian societies reputation is constitutive of
social and individual identity, and its worth cannot be reduced to a mon139
etary value.
It is clear that at present the common law of defamation bears the
influence of both the concept of reputation as property and the concept
of reputation as dignity. Not surprisingly, such divergent influences have
led defamation law in rather different directions. For example the
irrebutable presumption of general damages is consistent with the concept of reputation as dignity, but not with the concept of reputation as
property." Conversely, the fact that corporations and other inanimate
entities can sue for defamation"' is consistent with reputation as property, but not with reputation as dignity.
The conflict within defamation law is so severe that it is incapable
even of specifying coherent criteria by which publications can be distinguished as defamatory or nondefamatory. The "classic" 14 2 definition of
defamatory words as those injuring "the reputation of another by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule" 143 was clearly oriented toward
the concept of reputation as dignity, since it stressed the stigmatizing
harms that occur when rules of civility are violated. 1" But modem commentators view the classic definition as "probably too narrow," because
"some suggestions might be very injurious to the reputation of a busi139. For this reason a rough indication of the contemporary importance of the concept of
reputation as dignity can be seen in the finding of the Iowa Libel Research Project that only about
20% of plaintiffs "appear to have sued to obtain money as compensation for actual material
economic harm from the alleged libel." Bezanson, The Libel Suit in Retrospect: What Plaintiffs
Want and What Plaintiffs Get, 74 CALIF. L. REv. 789, 791 n.7 (1986). Most libel plaintiffs do not
appear to view the availability of money damages as particularly important. Instead the "major
motivating factors" behind contemporary libel suits are "restoring reputation, correcting what
plaintiffs view as falsity, and vengeance." Id. at 791 see Bezanson, Libel Law and the Realities of
Libel Litigation:Setting the Record Straight,71 IowA L. REV. 226, 227-28 (1985).
140. See supra text accompanying notes 3145. In a similar fashion the fact that in most
jurisdictions actions for defamation do not survive a plaintiff's death is consistent with the concept
of reputation as dignity, but not with the concept of reputation as property. Actions "for injury to
property or property rights" characteristically survive a plaintiff's death, whereas defamation
actions do not because they are viewed as merely "personal" to the plaintiff. A. HANSON, supra note
35, § 206.
141. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF ToRTS §§ 561-62 (1977); PROSSER & KEETON, supra note
26, at 779-80.
142.
GATLEY ON LIBEL AND SLANDER, supra note 35, at S 4 n.20.
143. Parmiter v. Coupland, (1840) 6 M. & W. *105, *108, 151 Eng. Rep. 340, 342 (1840) (per
Parke B.).
144. The influence of the concept of reputation as dignity is even more evident in subsequent
elaborations of this definition. For example, in Kimmerle v. New York Evening Journal, Inc., 262
N.Y. 99, 86 N.E. 217 (1933), the court defined defamatory words as those "which tend to expose one
to public hatred, shame, obloquy, contumely, odium, contempt, ridicule, aversion, ostracism,
degradation or disgrace, or to induce an evil opinion of one in the minds of right-thinking persons,
and to deprive one of their confidence and friendly intercourse in society." Id. at 102, 186 N.E. at
218 (citing Sydney v. MacFadden Newspaper Publishing Corp., 242 N.Y. 208, 151 N.E. 209 (1926)).
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW
[Vol. 74:691
nessman which would not be covered by the definition." 14 5 Reservations
regarding the definition clearly reflect the influence of the concept of reputation as property, which would imply that words should be defamatory
if they impair the market value of an individual's reputation. The strain
of straddling these two divergent perspectives is evident in the second
Restatement's definition of a defamatory communication:
A communication is defamatory if it tends so to harm the reputation of
another as to lower him in the estimation of the community
or to deter
146
third persons from associating or dealing with him.
The definition divides into two parts. A communication is defamatory if
it harms a person's reputation (1) so as "to lower him in the estimation of
the community," or (2) so as "to deter third persons from associating or
dealing with him." The first part of the definition turns on the meaning
of the phrase "the estimation of the community." The phrase refers to
the "esteem" with which a "community" embraces its members, and so
appears to derive from the concept of reputation as dignity. This is confirmed by the Restatement's explanation that "[c]ommunications are
often defamatory because they tend to expose another to hatred, ridicule
or contempt." 1 47
The second part of the definition, however, adopts a nonnormative
and purely behavioral account of defamation which turns on the deterrence of "third persons from associating or dealing with" the subject of
the communication. This seems designed to capture those cases in which
a person's reputation as property is injured even though the person has
not fallen in the community's esteem. 148 The definition evidently uses
behavioral criteria as a rough measure of loss of market value, since the
refusal to associate or deal is an overt and measurable sign of the loss of
potential goodwill and credit.
But this behavioral approach, if taken literally, leads to absurd
145. GATLEY ON LIBEL AND SLANDER, supra note 35, at 4. n.20. An example would be a
publication alleging "insolvency not due to discreditable conduct." Id. See L. ELDREDGE, supra
note 31, § 7 at 31 ("Any such definition as [Baron Parke's] is much too narrow and does not
encompass many statements which have been held to be defamatory."); Developments in the Law of
Defamation, 69 HARV. L. REv. 875, 878 (1956) ("Thus the scope of defamation seems to have been
conceived to include more than the lowering of the estimates of character."). Dean Prosser, on the
other hand, contended that defamatory words "necessarily" involve "the idea of disgrace." W.
PROSSER, supra note 2, at 739.
146. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 559 (1977). The strain is even more apparent in an
early draft of § 559: "A communication is defamatory if by its meaning it tends to harm the
reputation of another or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him."
RESTATEMENT OF TORTS 57 (rent. Draft No. 12, 1935).
147. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 559 comment b (1977).
148. See supra note 145. Thus the Restatement explains that statements can be defamatory
because they "tend to discredit [one's] financial standing in the community, and this is so whether or
not [one] is engaged in business or industry." RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 559 comment b
(1977). For variant interpretations of the word "associating," however, see infra note 149.
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
results. If I inaccurately say of another that he has a bad cold, people
may well be deterred from associating with him, at least until he is well.
Yet no court would hold the communication defamatory.1 49 Similarly,
to characterize a person incorrectly as a Republican is not defamatory,
even though Democrats may well be deterred from dealing with him and
as a result the person may lose credit or business opportunities.
50
In
examples like these we instinctively return to the perception that defamation law is primarily meant to sanction communications that breach the
ordinary rules of civility. This perception is exemplified by the common
law doctrine that "[p]otential for harm, rather than actual harm, is the
crux of the wrong."'' Defamation law understands itself as regulating a
specific class of communications which have the "general tendency" to
cause reputational harm;' 52 it does not simply provide compensation for
financial or associational losses resulting from untrue communications
generally.
D. Recapitulation
In a sense that is not simply metaphorical, a society can be said to
inhere in the social apprehension by which its members know and regard
each other. From this perspective, the field of reputation is vast and
encompassing, virtually coextensive with society itself. It makes little
sense in such a context to speak of defamation law as "protecting reputation," for such a task would be at once too enormous and too diffuse. It
is therefore necessary, if defamation law is to serve a coherent purpose, to
149. See Veeder, supra note 19, at 50. Yet there is some indication that the drafters of the
Restatement meant to embrace precisely this possibility. Thus comment c to § 559 states:
Social Aversion. A communication may be defamatory of another although it has no
tendency to affect adversely the other's personal or financial reputation. Thus the
imputation of certain physical and mental attributes such as disease or insanity are
defamatory because they tend to deter third persons from associating with. the person so
characterized.
To the extent that the drafters meant to define a communication as defamatory simply because it has
the tendency to lead to the loss of association, their definition is manifestly overbroad and leads to
the unacceptable results described in text. The most plausible interpretation, therefore, is that the
loss of association is significant because it is a measure of the loss of reputation as property. A
variant interpretation, however, is suggested by the drafters' reference to disease and insanity. An
accusation of either insanity or certain "loathesome" diseases, RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS
§ 572 (1977), can be stigmatizing, see E. GOFFMAN, supra note 114, at 54, 87, 89; M. FOUCAULT,
MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION (R. Howard trans. 1965), and hence such accusations may violate
rules of civility. The drafters' concern may thus have been to use defamation law to prohibit
breaches of civility rules that do not necessarily reflect on the "personal character" of the victim.
RESTATEMENT (SECOND)OF TORTS § 559 comment c (1977).
150. See Frinzi v. Hanson, 30 Wis. 2d 271, 278, 140 N.W.2d 259, 262 (1966) ("Actual damage
does not determine the [defamatory] nature or character of the cause of the injury."); Z. CHAFEE,
supra note 7, at 131.
151. Herrmann v. Newark Morning Ledger Co., 48 N.J. Super. 420, 441, 138 A.2d 61, 72
(1958).
152. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 559 comment d (1976).
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define and articulate concepts of reputation that more narrowly define
the specific forms of social apprehension to be legally protected.
Given the resolutely antitheoretical stance of the common law, the
attempt to isolate such particular concepts of reputation may seem chimerical. The difficulty is compounded by the common law's passion for
reducing disputes to money damages, a passion that for defamation law
has been "a crippling experience."' 53 Nevertheless several of the most
unique and important doctrines of common law defamation are consistent with some concepts of reputation and not with others. 5 4 These doctrinal markers can be used to reconstruct the specific concepts of
reputation that the common law has been designed to protect.
The three concepts of reputation that have been most influential in
the development of common law defamation are those of property,
honor, and dignity. These are not the only possible concepts of reputation.' 5 5 Other cultures, for example, have equated reputation with the
judgment of history and immortal fame.' 5 6 Our own society recognizes
the very special and unique form of reputation acquired by great leaders,
heroes, or Nobel Prize winners. Their reputations are individually
earned, and yet, as Professor Bellah reminds us in this Symposium, their
reputations are public treasures, not merely private possessions.' 57 The
impact of these forms of reputation on the actual shape of common law
defamation, however, has been on the whole negligible.
The three concepts of reputation as property, honor, and dignity
stand in ambiguous relationship to each other. There is nothing logically
inconsistent about defamation law representing the influences of two or
more of these concepts, and indeed some of the "anomalies and absurdities" that have plagued common law defamation can be traced to the
153. J.G. FLEMING, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LAW OF TORTS 207 (2d ed. 1986); see F.
POLLOCK, supra note 1, at 249; Barrett, DeclaratoryJudgmentsfor Libel A Better Alternative, 74
CALIF. L. REV. 847 (1986).
154. Some common law doctrines are of course consistent with many different concepts of
reputation. It is important to distinguish the concepts of reputation at work in specific defamation
actions from the concepts of reputation that have influenced the development of common law
doctrine. It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that particular concepts of reputation have been
influential in particular cases without leaving any doctrinally visible residue. For example, this
might very well presently be the case with the concept of reputation as honor: juries might be
influenced by the concept, even though doctrine is not. See supratext accompanying note 96. For a
discussion of the significant difference between the doctrine and practice of libel law, see N.
ROSENBERG, PROTECTING THE BEST MEN: AN INTERPRETATIVE HISTORY OF THE LAW OF LIBEL
219-22 (1986).
155. For an anthropological survey of various concepts of reputation, see GiFTS
AND POISON:
THE POLITICS OF REPUTATION (F.G. Bailey ed. 1971).
156. See, e.g., H. ARENDT, BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE 44-48 (1961); D. ADAIR, Fame and
the FoundingFathersin FAME AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS: ESSAYS BY DOUGLAS ADAIR 3 (T.
Colbourn ed. 1974).
157. Bellah,supra note 64, at 745. See F. NIETZSCHE, THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY 12-17
(A. Collins trans. 1949).
19861
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
simultaneous and diverse influences of these three competing concepts. 158
The difficulty arises because each of these concepts presupposes a very
different image of social life, and the intellectual consistency of defamation law is strained by the pull of divergent underlying assumptions
about the nature of social reality. But these divergent and inconsistent
assumptions reflect real tensions in the society in which defamation law
functions. Our own social world contains important elements of both
market and communitarian societies. If these tensions resolve themselves, one can expect the contours of defamation law to become clearer
and its doctrines more internally consistent. An example of this process
has been the gradual disappearance of doctrines peculiarly associated
with the concept of reputation as honor.1 59 But the tensions between a
market and communitarian society may in fact be inherent in our culture, in which case defamation law would do well to abandon the fiction
of protecting a unitary concept of reputation. By acknowledging the differences between reputation as property and reputation as dignity, defamation law could begin the task of devising distinct doctrinal structures
appropriate to each form of reputation.
The modern development of defamation law, however, has not been
fueled by such intrinsic concerns. It has instead since 1964 been largely
responsive to constitutional decisions of the United States Supreme
Court. The Court has used the first amendment as a tool to "reshape the
common-law landscape." 16 0 This process has involved a fascinating and
complex interaction between the values of our national Constitution and
the various assumptions about social life inherent in the differing conceptions of reputation implicit in common law defamation.
II
REPUTATION AND THE CONSTITUTION
For the better part of the twentieth century, defamatory communications were viewed as one of those "well-defined and narrowly limited
classes of speech"' 16 1 that were beyond the pale of constitutional protection.'16 This view changed in 1964 when the United States Supreme
Court in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan 6 3 held that the label of defama158. Other anomalies, of course, can only be understood as resulting from the vagaries of
defamation law's long and intricate history. See Veeder, The History and Theory of the Law of
Defamation, 3 COLUM. L. REV. 546 (1903).
159. Pat O'Malley argues that the gradual "disintegration of honour" is due to "[t]he rise of
commodity relations, the decline of the fief and the centralization of the state." O'Malley, supra note
48, at 83.
160. Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 106 S.Ct. 1558, 1563 (1986).
161. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571 (1942).
162. See, e.g., id. at 572; Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250, 255-57 (1952).
163. 376 U.S. 254 (1964).
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tion "can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations.
It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment.""
The specific holding of New York Times was that the first amendment precluded public officials from receiving damages in defamation
actions unless they could clearly and convincingly demonstrate that the
communication at issue "was made with 'actual malice'-that is, with
knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was
false or not." 6 ' The Court justified this holding by reference to specifically first amendment values in fostering "uninhibited, robust, and wideopen"16' 6 public debate and minimizing the possibilities of "self-censorship."16 7 The Court viewed these values as so pressing and important
that it did not pause to consider the nature of competing interests in the
protection of private reputation. It made no difference to the Court's
analysis whether the reputation at stake was a form of honor or property
or dignity.
From this perspective New York Times was a relatively easy case.
But as constitutional regulation of common law defamation grew more
extensive, and as the first amendment values at issue grew more attenuated, it became necessary to address with somewhat more precision the
exact nature of countervailing interests in protecting reputation. 168 This
task proved difficult, however, because the Court was unable to articulate
and explicitly evaluate pertinent distinctions among the various concepts
of reputation underlying common law defamation. But since it makes a
great deal of difference to the outcome of constitutional analysis whether
defamation law safeguards honor, property, or dignity, the implicit and
unacknowledged influence of these concepts can nevertheless be perceived in the actual holdings of the Court. Unfortunately the clarity of
the Court's reasoning has suffered from its failure directly to analyze the
constitutional implications of these concepts, as has its appreciation of
some of the more subtle issues raised by the constitutional regulation of
common law defamation.
A.
Honor and the Constitution
The concept of honor presupposes a deference society in which individuals are accorded status within a hierarchically arranged social order.
For this reason the concept is inconsistent with the egalitarian principles
of American democracy. The Constitution itself disapproves of official
164. Id. at 269.
165. Id. at 279-80.
166. Id. at 270.
167. Id. at 279.
168. See Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 105 S.Ct. 2939 (1985); Gertz v.
Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974); Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U.S. 29 (1971).
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
1986]
honorific status in explicit terms: "No Title of Nobility shall be granted
by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust
under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept any...
169
Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."'
The clearest example of the protection of reputation as honor can be
found in the law of seditious libel, which uses criminal sanctions to
penalize speech that dares to demean the esteem that government and its
officials demand by virtue of their status in the community. Seditious
libel protects the "special veneration ...due" to the those who rule.170
As Sir James FitzJames Stephen put it:
Two different views may be taken of the relation between rulers and their
subjects. If the ruler is regarded as the superior of the subject, as being
by the nature of his position presumably wise and good, the rightful ruler
and guide of the whole population, it must necessarily follow that it is
wrong to censure him openly, that even if he is mistaken his mistakes
should be pointed out with utmost respect, and that whether mistaken or
not no censure should be cast upon him likely or designed to diminish his
authority.
If on the other hand the ruler is regarded as the agent and servant,
and the subject as the wise and good master who is obliged to delegate his
power to the so-called ruler because being a multitude he cannot use it
himself, it is obvious that this sentiment must be reversed. Every member of the public who censures the ruler for the time being exercises in his
own person the right which belongs to the whole of which he forms a
part. He is finding fault with his servant.... To those who hold this view
fully and carry1 it out to all its consequences there can be no such offence
as sedition.
17
In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Court held that common law
defamation could not be used to shield government officials from criticism. The reasoning of the opinion turned on a constitutional repudiation of the law of seditious libel. 172 Indeed it has been said of New York
Times that its special virtue was the restoration of "seditious libel to its
essential role... as the key to the meaning of the First Amendment."' 7 3
This restoration was made possible, however, by a constitutional inversion of the status relationships protected by seditious libel. In America,
the Court said, government officials are "public servants,"' 74 and the
people are their masters. Masters have status and rightly demand veneration; servants do not. Hence the Court reaffirmed Madison's view that
8.
169. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 9, cl.
170. F. HOLT, supra note 64, at 90.
171. J.F. STEPHEN, supra note 59, at 299-300.
172. 376 U.S. at 273-78; Kalven, The New York Times Case: A Note on "The CentralMeaning
of the First Amendment," 1964 Sup. CT. REv. 191, 204-10.
173. Kalven, supra note 172, at 204.
174. 376 U.S. at 282.
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in "the American form of government," the "censorial power is in the
people over the Government, and not in the Government over the
' 17 5
people."
The rejection of seditious libel in New York Times is predicated
upon an implicit rejection of the honorific status of government officials. 176 In this country such officials are not "the superior of the subject." Since honor is but the internalization of status, the necessary but
unarticulated implication of New York Times is that the vindication of
official honor is not a constitutionally legitimate function of defamation
law. Defamation law cannot be used to protect the "special veneration"
claimed by government officials.
This conclusion was reinforced by an alternative holding of New
York Times. The plaintiff in New York Times was responsible for the
supervision of a city police department; the communication at issue did
not identify the plaintiff by name or official position, but instead charged
particular instances of police misconduct. The Court expressed concern
in its opinion that the private remedies afforded by defamation law might
be used to suppress criticism of government, and it therefore ruled that
there were constitutional dimensions to the question of whether an attack
on government was "of and concerning" 17 7 a particular government official. The Court placed constitutional limits on the ability of defamation
law to transmute "impersonal" government criticism "into personal criticism, and hence potential libel, of the officials of whom the government is
178
composed."
The distinction between official roles and the individuals who
occupy them is essential to the concept of rational legal authority.' 7 9 By
giving constitutional sanction to this distinction, New York Times severed the fusion of person and role that is necessary to the concept of
honor. In a deference society an affront to the monarchy is also a personal affront to the king, for it reflects on his honor. But the holding of
New York Times constitutionally forbids defamation law from protecting
this kind of personal identification with public office. 180
The firm and unmistakable message of New York Times, then, is
that the premises by which a deference society is governed are incompatible with the democracy created by the United States Constitution. For
this reason the use of defamation law solely to vindicate the honor of
public officials will be subject to vigorous and hostile constitutional scru175.
176.
177.
178.
179.
180.
Id.
See N. ROSENBERG, supra note 154, at 263-64.
376 U.S. at 288. See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 558(a).
New York Times, 376 U.S. at 288-92.
See supra text accompanying note 93.
See Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 80-83 (1966).
19861
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
tiny.1 8 This leaves open the question, however, of the relationship
between the Constitution and the use of defamation law to vindicate the
honor of persons who do not hold public office.
The question is difficult to analyze because our contemporary attitudes toward honor are so ambiguous. But it seems clear that since
honor flows from the unique status of a particular role, there is an intrinsic tension between honor and general ideals of egalitarianism. This was
quite clear in early nineteenth-century America, when honor was a more
tangible social fact. A major indictment pressed by reformers seeking to
abolish the Code of Honor of gentlemen duelists, for example, was that
gentlemanly honor was inherently antidemocratic:
The contempt with which duellists treat the opinions and feelings of
the community, is a reason why we should cease to confide in them.
The people, whatever men of honor may think of them, constitute
the strength, the virtue, and glory of the nation, and their opinions and
wishes demand respect from those who legislate for them. The feelings of
the great body of the people are decidedly opposed to duelling. This is
manifest from their law on this subject, and from the fact that the mass of
the people discard those notions of Gothic honor, resting satisfied with
that protection and redress which the law can afford. It is but a handful
of men only, compared with the whole that uphold this bloody system .... But the opinion of this handful is, by those who compose it,
deemed of far greater consequence, than the opinion and feelings of the
great mass of the people. Duellists well know your aversion to their
crimes .... But little do they care for your opinions or your feelings.
They move in a sphere too much above you, to let themselves down to
the standard of your conceptions, or to give themselves concern about
your petty pains.182
If duellists were able to use defamation law to vindicate their honor,
the law would in effect sanction the social inequality underlying their
assertions of honor. In the South, for example, where the protection of
white honor was viewed as a matter of grave importance, 183 it was as
recently as 1957 defamatory to say that a Caucasian was a Negro,
because of "the social distinction existing between the races, since libel
may be based upon social status." 18' 4 But no black could ever sue for
181. This does not imply that public officials cannot constitutionally prevail in defamation suits.
It only means that those doctrinal aspects of defamation law that unambiguously protect the honor
of public officials, as opposed to their property or dignity, will likely meet with constitutional
disapproval.
182. L. BEECHER, The Remedyfor Duelling: A Sermon Delivered Before the PresbyteryofLongIsland,at the Opening of Their Session at Aquebogue, April 16, 1806, in LYMAN BEECHER AND THE
REFORM OF SocIETY: FOUR SERMONS 24 (1972).
183. B. WYATr-BROwN, SOUTHERN HONOR 363 (1982).
184. Bowen v. Independent Pub. Co., 230 S.C. 509, 510, 96 S.E.2d 564, 565 (1957). See, e.g.,
Jones v. R.L. Polk & Co., 190 Ala. 243, 67 So. 577 (1915); Natchez Times Pub. Co. v. Dunigan, 221
Miss. 320, 72 So.2d 681 (1954); Flood v. News & Courier Co., 71 S.C. 112, 50 S.E. 637 (1905).
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defamation upon being called a white, since defamation law understood
itself to be enforcing "the intrinsic difference between whites and blacks,"
a difference inhering in the fact that, "from a social standpoint, the negro
race is in mind and morals inferior to the Caucasian."' 85 Defamation
law, in other words, affirmed the honor of whites by authoritatively denying status to blacks.
The issue is whether the legal affirmation of such status inequality
raises constitutional questions. The issue is hard to grasp because it is so
difficult to find concrete contemporary examples of defamation law
unambiguously protecting honor, rather than property or dignity. The
clearest such example is the use of defamation law to protect the status
hierarchy of race relations in the South, and it is no accident that we are
more likely to analyze the constitutional issues raised in that use of defamation law by reference to specific constitutional concerns located in the
thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, than we are to analyze it as an
abstract issue of social equality. Race relations reflect a social cleavage of
such deep and important social dimensions as to have become an
independent matter of substantive constitutional law. It is likely that
whenever defamation law unequivocally protects status inequality, it will
be reflecting a social division of similar societal significance, and one that
will have been independently conceptualized as a question of substantive
constitutional law. The use of law to protect honorific status within the
military is one such example.' 8 6 This suggests that an abstract constitutional analysis of the function of defamation law in protecting private
honor is not likely to prove particularly illuminating.
B.
The Constitution and Reputation as Property
If contemporary Americans are uneasy with the concept of honor,
they are intimately comfortable with the concept of property. We all live
a good part of our lives by the marketplace and its evaluations. The
national familiarity with property goes back to the country's origins, for
the Constitution is as explicit in its approval of the institution of property
as it is definitive in its rejection of official honorific status. The contracts
185. Wolfe v. Georgia Ry. & Electric Co., 2 Ga. App. 499, 58 S.E. 899, 901-02 (1907). See
Black, The Lawfulness of the Segregation Decisions, 69 YALE L. J. 421, 423-27 (1960).
186. Military law contains provisions that are essentially equivalent to seditious libel. See, e.g.,
United States v. Brooks, 44 C.M.R. 873 (1971); United States v. Montgomery, 11 C.M.R. 308
(1953); 10 U.S.C. § 891(3), art. 91 (1983); MANUAL FOR COURTS-MARTIAL OF THE UNITED
STATES art. 88, 89 §§ 888, 889 (Rev. ed. 1969); G. DAVIS, A TREATISE ON THE MILITARY LAW OF
THE UNITED STATES 376-77 (3d ed. 1915). The Supreme Court has traditionally analyzed aspects
of military law that may raise constitutional issues as turning on "the different character of the
military community and of the military mission." Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 758 (1974); see
Goldman v. Weinberger, 106 S.Ct. 1310 (1986); Hirschhorn, The Separate Community: Military
Uniqueness and Servicemen's ConstitutionalRights, 62 N.C.L. REV. 177 (1984).
19861
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
clause, 18 7 the takings clause,188 and the due process clause 189 are exam-
ples of constitutional solicitude for the institution. This solicitude
extends even to forms of intangible property that subsist entirely in
speech, for the Constitution gives Congress the power to "promote the
Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to
Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings
and Discoveries. ' 190
From the constitutional point of view, the concept of reputation as
property is the least problematic of all justifications for defamation law.
There have been two occasions when the United States Supreme Court or
its members have attempted explicitly to reason from an analysis of the
kind of reputation protected by common law defamation to a conclusion
about the nature of the constitutional regulation to which such law
should be subjected. On each occasion, the Court apprehended the purposes of defamation law within the framework of reputation as property.
The first such occasion was Justice Harlan's dissent in Rosenbloom
v. Metromedia, Inc.'91 His dissent is the clearest and most thoughtful
opinion by a Supreme Court Justice addressing the question of the purpose of defamation law, and it forcefully evokes the concept of reputation
as property. The opinion rests on the premise that "the States have a
perfectly legitimate interest, exercised in a variety of ways, in redressing
and preventing careless conduct . . . that inflicts actual, measurable
injury upon individual citizens." '92 Harlan views the "paramount goal"
of defamation law as "compensation for harm," and the kind of harm he
has in mind is that which is "susceptible of more or less objective measurement."I9 3 Harlan goes so far as to say that defamation law would be
unconstitutional if it were to subject "publishers to jury verdicts for falsehoods that have done the plaintiff" no such harm.19 4
Reputation for Harlan is thus a private good whose value can be
objectively measured. The paramount function of defamation law is to
provide compensation for the loss of that value. This understanding of
reputation is compatible only with the concept of reputation as property.
Reputation as dignity is not a value susceptible to objective measurement; and the paramount goal of a defamation law designed to protect
dignity would not be compensation, but rehabilitation. Harlan's explicit
187. U.S. CONsT. art. I, § 10, cl.1.
188. U.S. CONST. amend. V.
189. Id., see also U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1.
190. U.S. CONsT. art. I, § 8, cl8.
191. 403 U.S. 29, 62(1971). For an example of the influence of Harlan's opinion, see Anderson,
supra note 90, at 749, 755.
192. 403 U.S. at 64.
193. Id. at 75-76.
194. Id. at 66.
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condemnation of the use of defamation law to impose damages in the
absence of individual harm means that defamation law cannot be used
for the independent purpose of enforcing rules of civility.
The second occasion on which the Court discussed in detail the
nature of the reputation interest protected by defamation law was the
pivotal decision of Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 19' in which the Court
comprehensively determined the doctrinal framework for first amendment regulation of defamation law. Gertz reaffirmed the constitutional
rule that public officials and public figures must demonstrate actual malice before they can prevail in a defamation action. It concluded that
private figures must demonstrate fault and that, in the absence of actual
malice, punitive damages may not be awarded. Gertz reached these conclusions without explicitly assessing the nature of the state's interest in
defamation law. But with respect to one important holding Gertz did
engage in such an explicit assessment. Gertz held that in the absence of
actual malice the common law presumption of damages was unconstitutional, and that plaintiffs would therefore be restricted to "compensation
for actual injury." 19' 6 Although the manner in which the Court reached
this conclusion bears the recognizable influence of Harlan's dissent in
Rosenbloom, 19 7 the Court in Gertz altered Harlan's reasoning in subtle
but significant ways.
On its face the reasoning of Gertz is straightforward and uncomplicated. It begins with the premise, reiterated several times, that there is a
"strong and legitimate state interest in compensating private individuals
for injury to reputation.""1 9 This interest, however, "extends no further
than compensation for actual injury.' 19 9 The common law presumption
of damages is "an oddity of tort law, for it allows recovery of purportedly
compensatory damages without evidence of actual loss. ' ' 2" Not only
does the presumption of damages implicate specifically first amendment
concerns which involve encouraging uninhibited speech and discouraging the penalization of unpopular speech, but also, and "[m]ore to the
point," states "have no substantial interest in securing for plaintiffs...
gratuitous awards of money damages far in excess of any actual
195. 418 U.S. 323 (1974).
196. Id. at 349. Gertz never explained why the presumption of damages was constitutional if a
defendant published a defamatory untruth with actual malice. See id. at 395 (White, J.,
dissenting).
The point could not have been the particularly heinous behavior of such a defendant since Gertz also
specifically held that in cases of actual malice punitive damages could be imposed "to punish
reprehensible conduct and to deter its future occurrence." Id. at 350.
197. Robertson, Defamation and the First Amendment: In Praise of Gertz v. Robert Welch,
Inc., 54 TEx. L. REv. 199, 208 (1976).
198. Gertz, 418 U.S. at 348-49.
199. Id. at 349.
200. Id.
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
1986]
injury.
' 20 1
This reasoning, like Harlan's before it, is plainly within the framework of reputation as property. It views the primary function of defamation law as compensatory. It correctly perceives that the presumption of
damages is anomalous with respect to this function. And it easily concludes that plaintiffs can be restricted "to compensation for actual
injury" because the presumption of damages endangers first amendment
rights without being supported by any "substantial interest." Like
Harlan's dissent in Rosenbloom, the Gertz opinion appears to rule out the
use of the presumption of damages to sanction violations of civility rules;
if read literally, Gertz concludes that there is no important state interest
involved in the employment of such sanctions.
The matter, however, is not so simple. Gertz rejects Justice Harlan's
requirement that "actual injury" be objectively measurable, and instead
holds that "there need be no evidence which assigns an actual dollar
value to the injury."2
02
Gertz also refuses to define the nature of "actual
injury" except to say that it includes, over and above "out-of-pocket
loss," such harms as "impairment of reputation and standing in the com203
munity, personal humiliation, and mental anguish and suffering.
This characterization of actual injury is plainly inconsistent with the concept of reputation as property. While mental anguish and personal
humiliation may sometimes accompany the loss of reputation as property, they are not themselves the objects of the law's protection. It is easy
to imagine cases in which individuals suffer such emotional harm without
an accompanying loss of reputation as property. 2° If harm to reputation
were harm to property, states would have "no substantial interest" in
permitting recovery in such cases.
For these reasons the characterization of actual injury in Gertz must
be understood as flowing from the influence of a concept of reputation
other than that of property. At one level, of course, this influence is
obvious, for early on the Gertz opinion cites Justice Stewart's Rosenblatt
concurrence.20 5 But it is curious that while Gertz mentions the concept
of dignity, it neither develops the concept nor incorporates the concept
into its constitutional reasoning. The influence of the concept of dignity
is entirely implicit, perceptible only in the actual outcome reached by the
Court. That outcome is understandable from the perspective of reputation as dignity in the following sense: If a plaintiff has had his dignity
201. Id.
202. Id. at 350.
203. Id.
204. See, eg., Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 448, 460 (1976); Gobin v. Globe Publishing Co.,
232 Kan. 1, 649 P.2d 1239 (1982); Salomone v. MacMillan Publishing Co., 77 A.D.2d 501, 429
N.Y.S.2d 441 (1980).
205. 418 U.S. at 341-42; see supra text accompanying note 97.
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impaired by the violation of a civility rule, it is primafacie defensible to
compensate him for all injuries which flow from that violation, including
mental anguish and personal humiliation.20 6
The difficulty with this interpretation is that Gertz appears to contain no independent requirement that dignity be impaired, and so seems
to assume that every defamatory publication will automatically cause
harm to individual dignity, although this is not obviously the case.20 7
For example it is possible for a defendant to prove that a defamatory
communication was in fact disbelieved by all who heard it. For this reason commentators have charged that Gertz's definition of actual injury
converts "the tort of defamation from its common law purpose of protecting reputation into a new remedy for mental distress. ' 20 8 It is not
clear, however, that the charge is justified. The violation of a civility rule
is an accusation that puts a plaintiff's dignity at risk. Even if it could be
shown that the accusation is not believed, a plaintiff may still feel stigmatized and excluded, and the feeling would be well captured by notions of
anguish and humiliation. In such circumstances it is a fine question
whether harm to dignity resides in the judgment of the community or in
the humiliation of the person who believes he has been stigmatized. Certainly it is plausible to maintain that Gertz's resolution of the question is
faithful to the concept of reputation as dignity.
What is fascinating about Gertz, however, is that although its reasoning is entirely within the framework of reputation as property, its
actual holding is explicable only within the framework of reputation as
dignity. The disjunction between reasoning and outcome is disorienting.
It indicates that although the Court feels most comfortable within the
analytical framework of reputation as property, it is confident that the
protection of property only incompletely captures the actual purposes of
defamation law. The puzzle posed by Gertz is why in the face of this
confidence the Court is apparently unwilling frankly and explicitly to
incorporate the protection of reputation as dignity into its constitutional
206. It is important to note that Gertz imposes the actual injury requirement only on those
plaintiffs seeking compensatory damages. The requirement thus does not rule out the theoretical
possibility that a plaintiff could sue either for rehabiliation of dignity in the absence of damages, or
for the retraction of a libelous communication to minimize impairment of property. See Barrett,
supra note 153, at 854 Franklin, A DeclaratoryJudgment Alternative to Current Libel Law, 74
CALIF. L. REV. 809 (1986); Franklin, Good Names and Bad Law: A Critique of Libel Law and a
Proposal 18 U.S.F. L. REv. 1 (1983); Hulme, VindicatingReputation: An Alternative to Damagesas
a Remedyfor Defamation, 30 AM.U.L.REv. 375 (1981); Note, An Alternative to the General-Damage
Award for Defamation, 20 STAN. L. REV. 504 (1968); Note, Vindication of the Reputation ofa Public
Official 80 HARV. L. REv. 1730 (1967).
207. See supra text accompanying notes 123-25.
208. Anderson, supra note 90, at 757-58. See Ashdown, Gertz and Firestone: A Study in
ConstitutionalPolicy-Making, 61 MINN. L. REv. 645, 670-71 (1977); Eaton, The American Law of
Defamation Through Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. and Beyond: An Analytical Primer, 61 VA. L.
REv. 1349, 1438 (1975).
19861
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calculations as an independent and important purpose of defamation law.
This reluctance is a sign of the troubled relationship between the Constitution and the concept of reputation as dignity.
C. The Constitution and Reputation as Dignity
We can begin to understand this troubled relationship by reflecting
on the facts of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.2" 9 The communication at
issue in that case was a full-page advertisement in the New York Times by
the "Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for
Freedom in the South." The advertisement urged support for the civil
rights movement in the South, and, without naming individuals, detailed
instances of police abuse in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. L. B. Sullivan, an elected Commissioner of Montgomery responsible for supervision of the police department, sued for libel, seeking $500,000 in
damages. z10 On the basis of the advertisement three other Montgomery
officials sued for the same amount, and the Governor of Alabama for
$1,000,000.211
Sullivan's case was the first to come to trial. The trial judge was
Walter Burgwyn Jones, a man deeply hostile to the civil rights movement. He had once published The Confederate Creed, which began:
With unfaltering trust in the God of my fathers, I believe, as a Confederate, in obedience to Him; that it is my duty to respect the laws and
ancient ways of my people, and to stand up for the right of my State to
determine what is good for its people in all local affairs.2 12
Local hostility to the Times was so great that it had difficulty finding an
Alabama lawyer willing to represent it. When visiting Alabama the regular New York counsel for the Times had to register in a motel under an
assumed name.21 3
Although Sullivan "made no effort to prove that he suffered actual
pecuniary loss as a result of the alleged libel," he was awarded the full
$500,000 by the jury.2 14 The rationale for this award was the common
law presumption of damages. 2151 It was clear to all concerned, however,
209.
376 U.S. at 254 (1964).
210. Id., at 256-57.
211. Lewis, Annals of Law: The Sullivan Case, THE NEw YORKER, Nov. 5, 1984, at 53. Two
weeks after publication of the advertisement, the Times ran a story critical of Southern apartheid
entitled Fearand HatredGrip Birmingham. The article produced another $3,150,000 in libel actions
against the Times. Id. at 53-54.
212. Id. at 54.
213. Id.
214. 376 U.S. at 256.
215. In affirming the award of damages, the Alabama Supreme Court held that "[t]here is no
legal measure of damage in cases of this character." New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 273 Ala. 656,
686, 144 So.2d 25, 50 (1962) (quoting Haralson, J., in Advertiser Co. v. Jones, 267 Ala. 171, 100
So.2d 696 (1959)).
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that, in the words of Justice Black, "instead of being damaged Commissioner Sullivan's political, social and financial prestige [was] likely...
enhanced by the Times' publication."2'1 6 It was evident from the outset,
therefore, that neither Sullivan's individual dignity nor his property had
ever seriously been put at risk.2 17
From the standpoint of the common law of defamation, New York
Times was not an aberrant case. "Alabama did not create any special
rules of law for these defendants. It simply applied the existing principles of the law of libel."12 18 The case thus sharply poses the question of
exactly what function these common law principles were designed to
serve. If neither property nor individual dignity was at stake, to what use
was defamation law being applied in the case?
The concept of reputation as dignity creates the potential for two
distinct functions for defamation law: the enforcement of rules of civility
and the rehabilitation of individual dignity. 2 19 New York Times illustrates how defamation law can pursue the first of these functions without
implicating the second. In New York Times a local plaintiff and a local
jury used the law of defamation to punish those who dared to challenge
"the ancient ways" of the Alabama community.2 20 Justice Black, who
understood that community quite well, put it this way:
Montgomery is one of the localities in which widespread hostility to
desegregation has been manifested. This hostility has sometimes
extended itself to persons who favor desegregation, particularly to socalled "outside agitators," a term which can be made to fit papers like the
Times, which is published in New York. The scarcity of testimony showing that Commissioner Sullivan suffered any actual damages at all suggests that these feelings of hostility had at least as much to do with
rendition of this half-million-dollar verdict as did an appraisal of
216. Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 294 (Black, J., concurring).
217. Sullivan's dignity was never at risk because there was never any real possibility that the
dominant Montgomery community would regard the statements made about Sullivan as
stigmatizing. The jury was predisposed from the outset to accept Sullivan's own interpretation of his
behavior. This had little to do with the jury's acceptance or rejection of the "truth" of the Times
advertisement, in the sense of its factual accuracy. The concept of "truth" in a civil defamation
action can thus be a matter of some complexity, having more to do with the acceptance of
"interpretations" than with the determination of "facts." This is particularly true when reputation
as dignity is at issue.
218. Kalven, supra note 172, at 196.
219. See supra text accompanying notes 116-33.
220. For a discussion of the nature of that community, see Frankel, The Alabama Lawyer, 19541964: Has the Official Organ Atrophied? 64 COLUM. L. REv. 1243 (1964). The facts of New York
Times suggest that Professor Schauer's equation of jury judgments with majoritarian preferences
may not be entirely accurate. See Schauer, The Role of the People in First Amendment Theory, 74
CALtF. L. REV. 761 (1986). Juries speak for local communities, not necessarily for the national
society exemplified by the Constitution. In controlling a jury, therefore, a judge is overriding local
sentiment. The judge may take this action for a number of different reasons, including the necessity
of speaking for the values of a national majority.
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
damages.2 2 1
The doctrinal principle that was the instrument of this hostility was
the presumption of damages. The presumption both punishes those who
transgress civility rules of the community and provides the occasion for
the reaffirmation of community cohesion and identity. This would be
true whether or not Sullivan was a public official, and so the actual holding of New York Times does not directly address the constitutional legitimacy of this function of defamation law. Its constitutional legitimacy is
directly challenged in Gertz, however, which imposes an actual injury
requirement that repudiates the presumption of damages. Gertz explains
this repudiation in terms that make sense only within the framework of
the concept of reputation as property. But this explanation is not helpful, since Gertz's holding is inconsistent with this framework and in fact
reflects the influence of reputation as dignity.
Perhaps the best explanation for Gertz's holding lies in a case
222 issued on the same
decided three years earlier, Cohen v. California,
223
The appellant in Cohen had
day as Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc.
been convicted of "wearing a jacket bearing the words 'Fuck the
Draft.' ,,224 The Court, in an opinion by Justice Harlan, framed the issue
as whether a state could sanction speech so as to maintain "a suitable
level of discourse within the body politic. '225 The Court held in the negative, stressing the importance of the "constitutional backdrop against
which our decision must be made":
The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours. It is designed and intended to
remove governmental restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of
each of us, in the hope that the use of such freedom will ultimately produce a more capable citizenry and more perfect polity and in the belief
that no other approach would comport with the premise of individual
dignity and choice upon which our political system rests....
To many, the immediate consequence of this freedom may often
appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance.
These are, however, within established limits, in truth necessary side
effects of the broader enduring values which the process of open debate
permits us to achieve. That the air may at times seem filled with verbal
cacophony is, in this sense not a sign of weakness but of strength. We
cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling
and annoying instance of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these
221. Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 294 (Black, J., concurring).
222. 403 U.S. 15 (1971).
223. 403 U.S. 29 (1971).
224. Cohen, 403 U.S. at 16.
225. Id. at 23.
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fundamental societal values are truly implicated.2 26
The passage ranks among the finest statements of first amendment
principles in the judicial literature, and it rests flatly upon a repudiation
of the maintenance of community cohesion and identity as a legitimate
justification for the regulation of speech.2 2 7 Instead of a community con-
stituted and governed by rules of civility, Cohen affirms a polity of "verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance. ' 221 "No other
approach," Cohen states, "would comport with the premise of individual
dignity and choice upon which our political system rests." This premise
is one of our "fundamental societal values."
For Cohen, then, social discord and tumult are associated with
respect for a constitutional "premise of individual dignity." From the
perspective of defamation law, however, this association makes no sense,
for in defamation law human dignity is understood to derive from membership in an orderly and cohesive community defined by the reciprocal
observance of rules of civility. The constitutional form of "dignity" to
which Cohen appeals is thus quite different from the concept of "dignity"
that underlies the common law of defamation. For Cohen dignity inheres
in a sphere of "individual choice" and freedom from government interference, including freedom from the official enforcement of civility rules.
"[O]ne man's vulgarity," Cohen observes, "is another's lyric. ' 229 The
assumption behind the observation is that the value of speech must be
measured from the perspective of the individual speaker, rather than
from the standpoint of community values. The constitutional "premise of
individual dignity" upon which Cohen is grounded is thus a form of individual "autonomy. ' 230 Commentators have noted the widespread signifi23
cance of the concept of autonomy to constitutional decisionmaking, 1
226. Id. at 24-25.
227. As such, Cohen greatly undermines the reasoning of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315
U.S. 568 (1942), which held that defamatory speech should be exempt from constitutional protection
in part because of the "social interest in order and morality." Id. at 572.
228. For this reason Alexander Bickel registered his profound disagreement with the decision:
[There is a difference, although in a 1971 decision the Supreme Court managed not to
perceive it, between carrying a sign in public that says, Down with the Draft, and a sign
that says-I bowdlerize-Fornicate the Draft; between a publication that vigorously
criticizes the police and one that depicts them in a cartoon as raping the Statue of Liberty;
between using all manner of epithets and employing a fashionable one which is quaintly
abbreviated, "mother." This sort of speech constitutes an assault. More, and equally
important, it may create a climate, an environment in which conduct and actions that were
not possible before become possible.
A. BICKEL, supra note 112, at 72.
229. 403 U.S. at 25.
230. See I. KANT, GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS 103 (H.J. Paton trans.
1948) ("Autonomy is... the ground of the dignity of human nature ...." (emphasis in original));
S.LUKES, INDIVIDUALISM 52-58 (1973).
231. See, e.g., Eichbaum, Towards an Autonomy-Based Theory of Constitutional Privacy:
Beyond the Ideology of Familial Privacy, 14 HARV. C.R. - C.L. 361 (1979); Henkin, Privacy and
Autonomy, 74 COLUM. L. REV. 1410 (1974); Richards, Sexual Autonomy and the Constitutional
19861
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
particularly in the area of the first amendment; 232 that it could have
influenced so Burkean a Justice as Harlan is itself remarkable evidence of
the concept's pervasive importance.
The concept of autonomy and the concept of reputation as dignity
rest on opposing views of individual identity. The concept of reputation
as dignity assumes that the identity of an individual is in significant ways
the product of the social connections by which he is embedded in and
attached to a community. 233 This is why it is important for defamation
law to protect and enforce rules of civility, which constitute both individual identity and the community which makes that identity possible. The
concept of autonomy, on the other hand, assumes that the significant
aspects of individual identity are those that are authentically self-created,
even if what is created contradicts community values. 234 The underlying
image is captured in Michael Sandel's fine phrase of a self "unencumbered by constitutive attachments. '2 35 This image of the person strongly
parallels that presupposed by the notion of reputation as property; in
both cases individuals are conceived as having identities that are
independent of community attachments. The analogy helps to explain
the ease with which the Court incorporates the concept of reputation as
236
property into its constitutional reasoning.
Right to Privacy: A Case Study in Human Rights and the Unwritten Constitution, 30 HASTINGS L.J.
957, 964 (1979); Smith, The Constitution and Autonomy, 60 TEX. REV. 175 (1982); Wilkinson &
White, ConstitutionalProtectionfor PersonalLifestyles, 62 CORNELL L. REV.563, 611-13 (1977).
The concept of autonomy, of course, is rooted in pervasive and profound cultural developments.
As Leszek Kolakowski recently pointed out, "Market economy, rationalist philosophy, liberal
political doctrines and institutions, and modem science emerged as interconnected aspects of the
same evolution ...." Kolakowski, The Idolatry ofPolitics, THE NEW REPUBLIC,June 16, 1986, at
29.
232. T. EMERSON, THE SYSTEM OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION 6-8 (1970); Baker, The Processof
Changeand the Liberty Theory ofthe FirstAmendment, 55 S.CAL. L. REV. 293 (1981); Baker, Scope
of the FirstAmendment Freedom of Speech, 25 UCLA L. REv. 964 (1978); Redish, The Value of
Free Speech, 130 U. PA. L. REV. 591 (1982); Smith, supra note 231, at 185-86; Tribe, Constitutional
Calculus: Equal Justice or Economic Efficiency, 98 HARV. L. REV. 592, 618 (1985).
233. See supra text accompanying notes 99-116.
234. I. KANT, supra note 230, at 98-100; H. PEYRE, LITERATURE AND SINCERITY (1963);
L. TRILLING, SINCERITY AND AUTHENTICITY (1971); Schneewind, The Use ofAutonomy in Ethical
Theory, in RECONSTRUCTING INDIVIDUALISM: AUTONOMY, INDIVIDUALITY, AND THE SELF IN
WESTERN THOUGHT 73 (1986).
235. M. SANDEL, LIBERALISM AND THE LIMITS OF JUSTICE 178 (1982); see also Sandel, The
ProceduralRepublic and the Unencumbered Self 12 POLL THEORY 81 (1984).
236. Conversely, the parallel is suggestive of the causes of the Court's discomfort with the
concept of reputation as dignity. This discomfort sometimes reaches extreme proportions. An
illustrative example is Justice Brennan's plurality opinion in Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403
U.S. 29 (1971), which is the only effort by a Supreme Court Justice to offer an extended explication
of the meaning of "dignity" in Justice Stewart's Rosenblatt concurrence. Justice Brennan interprets
Justice Stewart's discussion of dignity to refer to an individual's "desire to preserve a certain privacy
around his personality from unwarranted intrusion ....
" 403 U.S. at 48. While this interpretation
is consistent with the concept of autonomy, it is inconsistent with any form of "dignity" that could
form a foundation for defamation law. Justice Brennan's gloss on the passage severs the connection
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Autonomy has important implications for the use of defamation law
to preserve community cohesion and identity. The message of Cohen,
and of course it is a message that conveys a central theme of first amendment jurisprudence, is that individual autonomy demands official respect
and therefore tolerance.23 7 Such tolerance, Cohen tells us, is "powerful
medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours. '238 Tolerance is
the art of living with diversity, of finding commonality in the face of
difference. The essence of tolerance is the refusal to draw boundaries
that shut out the deviant. But while this refusal may be justified by
respect for the individuality of the deviant and by the need for different
social groups to live together in a land as diverse as the United States, it
can nevertheless be deeply antithetical to the constitution of community
identity. Only a thoroughly demoralized community can tolerate everything. As Kai Erikson points out,
The deviant is a person whose activities have moved outside the margins
of the group, and when the community calls him to account for that
vagrancy it is making a statement about the nature and placement of its
boundaries. It is declaring how much variability and diversity can be
tolerated within 239
the group before it begins to lose its distinctive shape, its
unique identity.
A community without boundaries is without shape or identity; if pursued
with single-minded determination, tolerance is incompatible with the
very possibility of a community. For this reason tolerance as an ideal is
incomplete. If community life is to survive, on either the local or
national level, tolerance must at some point or another come to an
end. 2' Exactly where that point is depends a great deal on the imporbetween personal identity and social regard, and hence presupposes a form of "dignity" that cannot
be constituted by reputation.
237. See L.C. BOLLINGER, THE TOLERANT SOCIETY: FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND EXTREMIST
SPEECH IN AMERICA (1986). Tolerance is entirely consistent with the concept of reputation as
property. A defamation law that uniformly protects reputation as property is a form of respect for
the labor of the person who has created the property. Such a defamation law is tolerant in the sense
that it safeguards the goodwill earned by individuals, regardless of whether the content of that
goodwill contravenes community norms.
238. 403 U.S. at 24.
239. K. ERIKSON, supra note 116, at 11. See Nicholson, Toleration as a Moral Ideal, in
ASPECTS OF TOLERATION: PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 169 (J. Horton & S. Mendus eds. 1985).
240. In Cohen Justice Harlan is very much aware of this fact, and is careful to note that
constitutional tolerance subsists "within established limits." 403 U.S. at 25. One of these limits is
marked by the doctrine of obscenity, which may be defined as the point at which the constitutional
value of tolerance snaps and communities are set free to enforce their "community standards" so as
to define the "tone" and "quality" of their community identity. Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413
U.S. 49, 58 (1973); Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 33 (1973). It is noteworthy in this regard that
obscenity was originally one of the four great branches of criminal libel, the other three being
defamation, sedition, and blasphemy. Spencer, Criminal Libel-A Skeleton in the Cupboard (1)
1977 CRIM. L. REV. 383, 383.
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
tance one attaches to the intensity of community life and to the exercise
of freedom of expression as a reflection of individual autonomy.
This analysis suggests why the Court in Gertz had such difficulty
incorporating the protection of reputation as dignity into its constitutional reasoning as a legitimate function of common law defamation. For
this function ultimately rests on the value of intolerance, of a community
using the force of law to affirm community cohesion and identity. This is
self-evident in a case like New York Times, where defamation law is used
solely to enforce civility rules and to punish deviants, and where it serves
no other purpose. But it is also true in the more representative case in
which defamation law serves the additional function of rehabilitating
individual dignity.
Consider, for example, the case of a person who has been called a
homosexual and sues for defamation.24 1 He does not seek presumed
damages, but desires only to have the court issue an authoritative interpretation that he is not a homosexual. To decide such a case a court
must first determine whether the underlying communication is defamatory; that is, whether it is a sufficiently grave violation of civility rules so
as to put the plaintiff's dignity at risk. If the communication is deemed
defamatory the court will then decide, in a manner that authoritatively
speaks for the community, whether the plaintiff was properly stigmatized
as a homosexual. The rehabilitation of the plaintiff's reputation thus cannot occur unless the court adopts and affirms the validity of the underlying civility rule whose violation gave rise to the defamation.2 4 2 Whether
the plaintiff wins or loses, the concept of reputation as dignity will
require the court to affirm the community's identity as one that excludes
homosexuals. This affirmation is essential to the rehabilitation of the
plaintiff's dignity, since that dignity is conceived as membership in a
community constituted by civility rules which "intolerantly" distinguish
acceptable from unacceptable speech.
For the Supreme Court explicitly to incorporate into its constitutional analysis the principles underlying the concept of reputation as dignity, therefore, would require it to embrace values that directly fly in the
face of the essential premise of constitutional autonomy. That premise
might conveniently be summarized as "the right to differ as to things that
241. See Matherson v. Marchello, 100 A.D.2d 233, 239, 473 N.Y.S.2d 998, 1005 (1984).
242. In rehabilitating the plaintiff's dignity, the court cannot act as would a neutral and
uncommitted observer, as would an anthropologist who finds, records, and applies the civility rules
of an exotic culture without herself believing in or affirming their validity. The court can rehabilitate
the plaintiff's dignity within the community only if it speaks as a legitimately representative
interpreter of the community's civility rules. This has important implications for the range of local
communities as to which defamation law can function to rehabilitate dignity, for particularly in a
modem pluralistic society a court cannot legitimately represent all communities within its
jurisdiction.
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touch the heart of the existing order."24' 3 In Gertz the Court was apparently unwilling to confront this dilemma, and so avoided the tension by
rationalizing its holding in the language of reputation as property, even
though its holding could not be explained within that framework.
A clear recognition of the tension between reputation as dignity and
constitutional autonomy, however, is helpful in understanding the holding in Gertz. In effect the actual injury requirement prohibits the use of
defamation law to enforce civility rules, but permits its use to rehabilitate
individual dignity. From the standpoint of the concept of constitutional
autonomy, these functions of defamation law have important differences.
Defamation actions to enforce civility rules have only one purpose,
which is to maintain community identity, and they achieve this purpose
through the punishment of individuals who transgress community
norms. They thus pose a stark and unmitigated challenge to constitutional autonomy. Individuals are punished solely to support the
supremacy and importance of community norms. 2'
Defamation actions to rehabilitate individual dignity, on the other
hand, also serve to maintain community identity, but do so through the
affirmation of civility rules rather than through their enforcement. Such
actions also perform the additional function of answering the very real
needs of individuals to have those rules authoritatively construed. The
tension between constitutional autonomy and actions to rehabilitate individual dignity is thus more diffuse. Community norms are affirmed,
rather than enforced. Individuals are not punished for breaking such
norms, but rather forced to pay damages for injuries they have caused.
The justification for this compromise of individual autonomy is not
merely the need to maintain community identity, but also the need to
compensate for harms to other individuals. Even in Cohen the Court
recognized that a state could uphold civility norms when "substantial
privacy interests are being invaded in an essentially intolerable
245
manner."
These differences suggest that plausible reasons can be offered to
support the distinction implied in Gertz between the use of defamation
law to enforce rules of civility and its use to rehabilitate individual dignity.2 46 In the end these reasons may or may not be sufficient to justify
243. West Va. State Bd. Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943).
244. In special contexts, like that of the public schools, where egalitarian ideals are relatively
dilute and individual claims to autonomy weak, the Court has indicated its willingness to approve
punishment solely for the purpose of enforcing "the habits and manners of civility." Bethel School
Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 106 S.Ct. 3159, 3164 (1986).
245. 403 U.S. at 21.
246. To the extent these reasons are persuasive, however, the distinction must be analyzed in
more than simply doctrinal terms. See supra note 154. For example it must be asked whether the
availability of damages for mental anguish and humiliation serves in practice to enforce rules of
19861
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
the distinction, but the point is that they can be neither visible nor
explicit unless the concept of reputation as dignity is acknowledged and
its implications for constitutional autonomy assessed.
The problem with this prescription is that constitutional autonomy
and the concept of reputation as dignity rest on opposing views of the
nature of human identity. In this country defamation law is ultimately
local law and, as such, is enlisted in the aspiration of local communities
to create a good and wholesome life for their members. The aspiration,
however, is grounded on the assumption that this good life is constitutive
of the very identity of the community's members. The concept of autonomy, on the other hand, emanates from a national constitution, and is
founded in large measure upon a denial of this assumption. The ultimate
metaphor of our national political life is that of public debate leading to
the informed and personal consent of the governed. The metaphor
assumes an image of mature and independent individuals mutually
agreeing to together live a good life, rather than that of individuals
socialized by a community into a commonly accepted vision of a good
life. The differences between these two images are fundamental, and
even if they are acknowledged it is not clear how they can ever be
resolved.
CONCLUSION
Gertz has not been the Court's last word on the common law presumption of damages. The Court addressed the question again in Dun &
Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc.247 In Dun & Bradstreet a
credit reporting agency had issued an inaccurate report concerning a
small corporation, Greenmoss Builders, which operated as a construction contractor. The credit report falsely stated that Greenmoss Builders
had filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy. The corporation sued for
defamation, and the Vermont Supreme Court held that presumed and
punitive damages could be awarded even in the absence of a showing of
actual malice.2 48
The United States Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in a decision divided among four separate opinions, no one of which spoke for the
Court. Chief Justice Burger and Justice White each wrote a separate
opinion to the effect that Gertz should be overruled and that the holding
civility rather than simply to provide compensation for actual injuries caused by the loss of
individual dignity.
247. 105 S.Ct. 2939 (1985).
248. The Vermont Supreme Court interpreted Gertz as imposing the actual injury requirement
only in cases where the defendant was a member of the media. Greenmoss Builders, Inc. v. Dun &
Bradstreet, Inc., 143 Vt. 66, 72-76, 461 A.2d 414, 417-19 (1983), aff'd on other grounds, 105 S.Ct.
2939 (1985).
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[Vol. 74:691
of New York Times should be reconsidered. Justice Brennan dissented,
and was joined by Justices Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens. The judgment of the Court was announced by Justice Powell who, in an opinion
joined by Justices Rehnquist and O'Connor, held that the common law
presumption of damages is constitutional if the plaintiff is a private figure
and if the communication at issue does not involve "matters of public
249
concern."
Most of the debate within the Court turned on questions of first
amendment policy. Only Justice Powell attempted to craft a decision
keyed to the nature of the state's interests in protecting reputation.
Powell undertook to "employ the approach approved in Gertz and balance the State's interest in compensating private individuals for injury to
their reputation against the First Amendment interest in protecting this
type of expression."' 10 Justice Powell cited Stewart's Rosenblatt concurrence as authority for the view that the state's interest in protecting reputation is that of safeguarding "our basic concept of the essential dignity
and worth of every human being." 5 And Justice Powell deferred to the
state's interest in maintaining a presumption of damages because of "the
experience and judgment of history that 'proof of actual damage will be
impossible in a great many cases.'
"1252
The root difficulty with Justice Powell's opinion is that it frames the
issue to be resolved as an abstract conflict between the first amendment
and something called "reputation." Although the issue is usually framed
in exactly this way, 5 3 the formulation is, as Dun & Bradstreetitself illustrates, deeply misleading. Reputation is not a single idea, but is instead a
melange of several different concepts. Each concept demands its own
constitutional analysis. The failure to understand this seriously undercuts the force of Justice Powell's opinion. For example, although Justice
Powell justifies defamation law in terms of the protection of human dignity, the plaintiff in Dun & Bradstreet was a corporation that could
advance no conceivable claim to such dignity. 25 4 It was clear from the
249. 105 S.Ct. at 2946. Justice Powell also held that punitive damages could be awarded in such
circumstances even in the absence of a showing of actual malice. The "public concern" standard has
recently been incorporated into a majority Court opinion. See Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v.
Hepps, 106 S.Ct. 1558 (1986).
250. 105 S.Ct. at 2944-45.
251. Id. at 2945 (quoting Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 92 (1966) (Stewart, J.,concurring)).
252. 105 S.Ct. at 2946 (quoting W. PROSSER, supra note 2, § 112, at 765). Such appeals to
history and experience have traditionally been the source of many of the "anomalies and absurdities"
that have plagued common law defamation. See, e.g., RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 568
comment b at 180 (1977); T. STARKIE, supra note 14, at 130; Veeder, supra note 158, at 546.
253. See, eg., Brosnahan, From Times v. Sullivan to Gertz v. Welch: Ten Years of Balancing
Libel Law and the FirstAmendment, 26 HASTINGS L. J.777, 777 (1975); Robertson, supra note 197,
at 204.
254. See Martin Marietta Corp. v. Evening Star Newspaper Co., 417 F. Supp. 947, 954-55
1986]
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIBEL
outset that the harm suffered by the plaintiff, if any, was only to its corporate goodwill. In such a context the presumption of damages is anomalous at best. This is amply illustrated by the facts of Dun & Bradstreet:
the defamatory "credit report was made available to only five subscribers, who, under the terms of the subscription agreement, could not disseminate it further."2 5 In effect, therefore, the reasons underlying
Justice Powell's opinion had virtually no application to the facts of the
case actually before him. These reasons must instead be interpreted as
addressing a different and more general issue. Once the distinction
between reputation as property and reputation as dignity is grasped, this
issue can be seen as identical to the one which underlay Gertz. It is the
complex and profoundly significant issue of striking a balance between
the protection of constitutional autonomy and the maintenance of community cohesion and identity.
Dun & Bradstreetperfectly illustrates the importance of separating
reputation into its constituent concepts. Because he viewed reputation as
a single, undifferentiated interest, Justice Powell was led to address an
issue that was not present in the case before him, and to reach a judgment that was highly questionable in light of the specific facts of that
case. Distinguishing among reputation as honor, property, and dignity
will not magically dispel the serious dilemmas that reside in the constitutional regulation of common law defamation. Significant and intractable
constitutional tensions will remain. But at least these tensions will be
defined and their subtleties addressed, and they will no longer indiscriminately inflame all aspects of the relationship between the Constitution
and defamation law.
Quite apart from its implications for constitutional law, the recognition of the distinct concepts of reputation underlying defamation law
should be of some relevance to the development of common law doctrine.
Instead of constructing rules and definitions that awkwardly attempt to
span the gulf separating reputation as property from reputation as dignity, the two aspects of reputation can be distinguished and managed
through different doctrinal structures. We need to reassess, for example,
the relationship between the protection of reputation as property and the
tort of injurious falsehood. In a similar way we must reevaluate the connections between the protection of reputation as dignity and the various
torts protecting privacy and emotional well-being. The role of damages
in protecting reputation as dignity requires reappraisal, as do the limitations and desirability of using courts to maintain community identity and
cohesion through the enforcement of rules of civility.
(D.D.C. 1976); M. DAN-COHEN,
255.
RIGHTS, PERSONS, AND ORGANIZATIONS: A LEGAL THEORY FOR
(1986).
105 S.Ct. at 2947 (opinion of Powell, J.).
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But these are all projects for another day. For the moment it is
enough to begin to appreciate the intricate and varied social foundations
of the common law of defamation.